


The Knuckles of Skinnybone Tree

by hansbekhart



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Spookiness, Canon-Typical Violence, Hallucinogens, M/M, Psychotropic Drugs, Sibling Incest, Violence towards a child (dream sequence)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-04
Updated: 2007-05-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 03:24:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7083196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hansbekhart/pseuds/hansbekhart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Winchester walks the badlands, lost on the Path of the Dead, when he meets two mysterious men: a pair of hunters chasing the same ghost that he is, who tell him that he's wound up more than twenty years in the future. They promise to get him back to his own time - back to his young children - but refuse to tell him anything about themselves. The three men find themselves entangled with the warring spirits of the land, but John is pursued by nightmares and caught up between the two hunters, who are keeping secrets that John doesn't understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the 2007 SPN Big Bang, and posted to livejournal [here](http://hansbekhart.livejournal.com/265125.html).

  


John Winchester walks the badlands, his head hung low, his boot heels scuffing across shale. The sun’s finally out of his eyes, hanging low against the horizon, lingering. Nightfall, finally. The desert will come alive around him, small animals that skitter invisibly away from his footsteps, the silent beat of wings above his head.

The bullets in his gun will vaporize most everything edible out here, but he thinks he’s heard rabbits. He heard one scream as it was picked up by a hawk, the sound of it echoing like a gunshot across the hills. He thinks he could pick a rabbit off, if he could see one of the damn things. When it rises, the moon will be heavy in the sky, barely half-full. It hasn’t changed since he’s been walking, through all the nights and weeks and years or however the fuck long he’s been out here, and that’s what makes him think he’s already dead and just doesn’t know it.

He was only fifty miles outside of what passes for civilization in these parts, skeletal farmhouses populated by people who look like they were carved out of the desert they live in. He knows a man can get turned around in a place like this, get doubled back on his own tracks; he _knows_ this but he wasn’t so stupid to come out here without a compass and it hasn’t told him wrong yet. He should’ve gotten back, should’ve seen something by now. He headed south the morning after the old man left him, picked a spot on the horizon and started walking.

He doesn’t let himself think about the boys, but they’re always on the edge of his mind, tugging at his sleeve. Whether they’re okay, if Dean’s keeping a good eye on Sammy, if Bill is keeping an eye on both of them, making sure they’re not running ragged and dusty in the yard like all those dogs he keeps. What’ll happen to them if he never comes back.

John tamps his last cigarette against his thumbnail, his stride faltering only long enough to get the thing lit. Shale clatters under his boots and slides off into the darkness. He’s almost to the crest of the hill. There’ve been whiteouts, dust storms where all he can do is crouch down and try not to breathe. The taste of the sand is in his mouth, on his skin. He’d give anything for water.

Threw away the water skins two days ago. Two years ago. Should’ve died by now anyway, all that sun. He got to know heat in ‘Nam but nothing could’ve prepared him for this. ‘Nam had been like drowning in your own sweat and uncertainty, but this - the desert sun sucks the sweat off your skin and leaves you with no hope of rescue. No helicopter coming, no radio to call for backup.

He’s thought he was dying before. Come close to it. When he was gut shot by a sniper, thought all of his insides were gonna come steaming out of his body. After Mary was murdered, no time to even breathe between the baby’s needs and Dean’s needs and his own grief, so deep and dark that it was all he could think about. Still doesn’t know how he made it through those months. When he was shot the medics had been on him in a heartbeat. It wouldn’t have been a bad way to go, bleeding his life out on a jungle trail, better than grieving to death, better than this. Not knowing if his boys were gonna be okay.  
  
John hefts the pack a little higher on his shoulder. It’s lighter without the food or water he came out here with, light enough that the .45 is a solid weight against his back. He’s just dehydrated now but it’s only a matter of time before he’s raving. Better to blow his brains out on a desert trail. He’ll give it another day or two, see if he can feel himself start to go.

The cigarette helps. Clears the taste of dust out of his mouth even as it sears his throat. Cheap fuckin’ hand rolled tobacco. He should’ve known he’d already hit bottom when he was buying Top. He drops the butt and grinds it under his heel, and when he looks back up, he sees the fire.

He doesn’t want to believe it, at first. The fire’s still a good ways off but the moon’s heading towards full and he has the higher ground; he should’ve seen it miles ago. And then: it doesn’t have to be human to set a campfire. He can see two shapes, one seated and the other moving around, but the old man had looked human too, right up until he drew an arm out of his cloak.

But John doesn’t have much to lose, anyway.

He approaches slow, low to the ground, the .45 in one hand. The camp's in the last remnants of a ghost town, a squat cluster of buildings in the middle of the plain, and he circles carefully around. He can smell their dinner, roasted meat of some kind. Human, then, unless the local spirits like hickory sauces. Should’ve smelled that miles away too.

He can hear them talking as he reaches the first building. A man’s voice, rough and lazy, loud enough to carry on the still air.

“ - year we should just hit the Grand Canyon again, man. I’m really starting to hate all of this roughing-it shit. And since when did you get into camping? Always a goddamn princess when you were a kid. ‘Daddy, there’s a bug in here!’ ‘I refuse to shit in a field!’ Whatever mid-life crisis you’ve got going on, leave me out of it, okay?”

The speaker’s back is to him. Cropped hair, broad shoulders, no shirt. Hell of a collection of scars on his back. He’s sitting Indian style a few dozen yards away, close enough that John can see his empty hands.

There are a lot of excuses for what happens next, but no reasons. John’s dehydrated, exhausted, bruised to hell. He’s listening to the guy in front of the fire chatter, and it isn’t until he feels the butt of a shotgun come down against the back of his skull that he realizes nobody's talking back.

He hits the ground on his hands and knees and tries to roll, bring the gun up, do anything. The gun is kicked out of his hand before he can move and something - the shotgun butt or a boot, he can’t _see_ \- gets him right on the jaw. He goes down. Flat on his back into the dust, trying to see what hit him.

From the darkness, the man’s voice comes again. “You get him?”

“Yeah,” says another voice, right above him, and John flinches when the flashlight clicks on. He can see the glint of the shotgun trained on him, held underneath the flashlight, a shaggy crown of hair. And then, low, choked, “Holy fuck -”

He sees the flashlight shake, sees the barrel of the shotgun dip. He knows what’s going to happen.

The crack of the gun is deafening, and for a moment, John knows that this is it. This is how he goes, he’s dying, he’s dead.

Then his nerves kick back in and the howl of pain in his skull and jaw are deafened by the shrieking of his chest. Hands are all over him in an instant, prying him out of the fetal position he's curled into, framing his face and holding it still. He hears someone calling, “Sammy? Sammy!” over and over, a voice sobbing “Christo” above him, and then nothing at all.

 

-

 

Everything hurts. It’s the first thing he’s aware of again, that everything hurts.

“Who are you?”

There’s water on his forehead, chill across his chest. John opens his eyes slowly. There’s a man staring down at him, swiping a wet cloth over John’s forehead. “Who are you?” he asks again.

“You shot me,” John manages. His own voice hurts to hear.

“Yeah,” the man says. “Sorry about that. What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?”

“Jimmy,” the man says. “Don’t be an asshole. I’m gonna lift your head up, okay? Sip it slowly.”

The water’s flat and tastes like it came out of a drain. It’s the best thing John’s ever tasted. Jimmy pulls the cup away when a little bit slops over the side, his eyes watchful. “My name’s John,” John replies, finally.

“Say Saint Michael’s prayer,” Jimmy says. Two years ago, that might’ve made John pause, but he’s met some strange folk since then and it rolls off his tongue easily enough. Jimmy’s face tightens as John recites the prayer, calls on the prince of heavenly armies, and when he gets to the part about binding the old serpent, Jimmy lifts the cup back to John’s mouth again.

“Okay,” he says while John’s drinking. It sounds a little bit like he’s saying it to himself, and he says it again, a little louder. “Okay. So. John. Where were you born?”

“Indiana,” John says. He lets his head flop back down and only then notices that he’s got a pillow under there and a sleeping bag under his back.

“What year?”

“We playing Twenty Questions?” John says. He opens his eyes, meets Jimmy’s square on.

“What the hell were you doing all the way out here, John?” Jimmy replies.

“Hunting,” John says, and Jimmy grins at that, dips his chin into his chest and shakes his head a little.

“Of course.”

John lets that one go, closes his eyes again and takes stock. He feels better, tighter. His chest stings like fuck, but the inside of his mouth is wet and that's all he cares about. He laughs shakily and surprises himself by saying, “Thought I was a goner out there.”

Jimmy just nods, not looking at John. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m uh, I’m gonna let you get some rest. There’s water right here when you need it, just come out whenever you want. We’ll be around.” He’s out of the room before John can say anything, and for a long moment, everything is quiet. He can hear Jimmy’s boots thumping across the hard packed earth and, quietly, voices.

Jimmy didn’t seem too surprised to hear that John was hunting in the badlands. They’ll tell him if they’re hunting the same thing when they’re ready to, he guesses. John’s met a lot of people in the last few years, hollow-eyed and empty or filled with the same sort of things that he is, and he knows better than to pry.

John drowses. Bobs up against the surface of consciousness and sinks again. It’s too hot to do much else. Once, there’s food laid out for him. Twice the water bottle next to his sleeping bag is refilled. The second time the jerky, untouched, is gone again.

He dreams. His boys are tucked into the curve of his arms. Dean’s short hair, damp with sweat, prickly against the sensitive skin of his inner arm. Sammy is a solid weight on top of his chest, smaller than he’s been for half a year. The smell of the desert seeps into the dream, a sort of no-color scent that reminds him of abandoned houses. It blends with the sweet-sour baby smell of his children. Somewhere, he’s aware of voices, flowing over what’s left of his family like the faintest breath of dry air.

He drifts. Water in his veins, sloshing in his stomach. His boys, with him, where they should be. He used to sleep this way sometimes on his days off, after hours in the yard teaching Dean to catch a football or swinging Sam into the air, sprawled out on their Goodwill couch or in the sweet grass in the yard, Sammy sleeping or just staring at John like his daddy was magic. Months where Dean was happier sandwiched between John and Mary than in his brand-new big boy bed that had cost most of a paycheck, his little hands clenched tight around John’s thumbs.

“After this, we’ll go some place on the coast,” he murmurs, stroking a hand over Dean’s hair. “Somewhere that rains all the time. Beaches. I’ve never seen the Pacific before. Not from this side of it. Yeah. Somewhere wet.”

Dean’s wet enough to have been swimming, sweat pooling on the back of his neck where his skin bunches together, underneath where his fingers curl against John’s chest. Sammy’s heavy, as heavy as the toddler he really is, his head sliding across John’s skin. Slicker than it should be, and the heavy tang of iron is in his nose.

And his mouth moves even though his whole body has turned to stone, his lungs frozen, his fingers numb where they cup the backs of his sons’ skulls. “Deano?” he croaks. And he looks, even though he knows what he’s going to see.

It’s already soaked through the sleeping bag underneath him, trickling down his collarbone and to either side of his throat in sullen streams. He can feel it dripping off his skin, Dean’s face buried behind a mask of bruises and gore, his mouth open, the lower lip split in two. His hands are burned where they rest against John’s skin, dead, blackened skin flaking off to reveal oozing sores. And it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, to drag his eyes up to see his younger son, his baby. To see that Sammy’s head hangs wide from the rest of his body, his soft throat hacked all the way through until John can see bone.

He’s on the ground before he realizes he’s awake, gagging on blood, his hands and shirtfront and face soaked in it, great clots of blood streaming from his nose and mouth. He’s reaching for his sons, his hands scrabbling over the splintered wood. It’s a long, long time before he can uncurl himself, stand up, pinch his nose shut to try and stop the flow of blood. Not real. Not real, not real, not real. Safe with Bill, not getting any vegetables, running ragged and dusty with all those dogs. Safe.

“Safe,” he rumbles, and wipes blood from his face.

It’s dusk when he stumbles out into the open, as cleaned up as he could get with a bottle of water and a clean shirt. The fire’s already going and his - rescuers, he doesn’t know what to call them yet, tough to name a friendship that started off with you getting shot - are sitting on the other side of it. They tense and move apart as if they’ve been stung as soon as they lay eyes on him, which is ... interesting, but not as interesting as the smell of meat they’ve got laid across the coals.

“John,” Jimmy says, after a moment. He stands, brushing dust from the knees of his jeans. “You uh, you hungry? There's rabbit.”

“Yeah,” John says. The other guy stays seated, his eyes flat and unreadable. Something dangerous about them, John thinks. Once, he caught a VC after two steady weeks under fire, two weeks of the bastards following John's unit around from village to village until his unit caught a nest of them, hiding out under some family’s house. One of them, skinny fucker, younger than John was, turned around and shot the three VC who raised their hands in surrender before they could take him down. John had been in the Corps for a while by then but he was new to the jungle. He’d crept forward, the muzzle of his gun still hot, and watched the light go out of the VC’s dark eyes.

He holds the man’s eyes - wide, and green in a way that catches at the edge of his memory - and steps over the clear circle that they’ve carved into the dirt, over the symbols that line its edge. Jimmy introduces his, uh, friend as Robert, or Rob. Robert lifts his chin in greeting, says nothing.

Dinner’s quiet. Jimmy and Robert are staring at him. Every time he puts his head down to eat, John can feel their eyes on him like a physical weight. Jimmy passes a bottle around, bathwater warm, Jameson. Robert hasn’t moved except to turn the rabbit skewers he’s got neatly lined up, pinching a thin strip of meat every few minutes, handing them over to Jimmy when he judges them cooked. He doesn’t take any himself, only drinks from a water bottle and stares.

Maybe they still think John’s some sort of creature, some kind of spirit. He eats carefully even though he wants nothing more than to put away three or four rabbits. He’s never had rabbit before. It tastes better than he would’ve thought. Hell, it’s fucking delicious. “This is great,” he says.

They blink at him. “Thanks,” Jimmy says, after a moment.

Robert grunts and then asks abruptly, “So, what were you doing out there, John?”

John swallows the bite in his mouth, chases it with a swig of water. “Tourists going missing,” he says. “Six of them over the last two years.”

“Maybe they got lost,” Robert says.

John bristles at his tone. “I was in the neighborhood, told a friend I’d do him a favor, check this one out.”

Robert and Jimmy exchange a look. “Funny,” Robert says. “That’s how we wound up out here. You find what you were looking for, Johnny?”

“Yeah,” John says shortly. “I did.”

The sun sets, unwillingly. The air gets cooler. Jimmy gets more water from wherever they’ve got it stored. He’s tall enough that John starts a little every time he gets near. John’s not a small man but Jimmy looms, his shoulders hunched as though he’s too aware of his height. His boots clumping across the shale are slow enough that John could almost forget how blindingly fast they’d moved when they needed to, disarming John as easily as a child.

Robert grudgingly shares his cigarettes with John. He tosses John the pack with a neat flick of the wrist and his mouth twitches a little when John catches it one-handed, uses the lighter stuffed inside. John talks about nothing with Jimmy, hunting and the sort of jobs they’ve worked. He's not a talkative guy, doesn’t like chit chat, but he’s just spent a week in the badlands with nobody around to talk to but bones.

He doesn’t ask, _how did you get started in this_ ; he wouldn’t answer the question himself, but he does ask, “How long have you guys been hunting?”

They look at each other again. They do that a lot. Every other sentence is punctuated with some sort of glance, returned or not, that makes John feel like there’s some sort of joke being told behind his back. Through the light of the fire he can see that Jimmy’s hand is wrapped around Robert’s bare foot, the sort of gesture that he thinks he’s not supposed to see, Jimmy’s thumb stroking slowly over the other man’s skin, over and over.

John’s not a religious man, not anymore. He guesses that there’s enough Jesus and Satan and sin leftover in him to feel vaguely queasy, watching two men touch like that, but most of the small things quit looking so damn big two years ago and he never cared too much to know what people did behind closed doors, anyway.

“It’s kinda the family business,” Jimmy says, uncomfortably. Robert rubs the back of his own neck, not looking at either of them. “For both of us. We were raised in it, never really knew much else.”

Robert snorts. “The fuck’re you talking about, college boy?” He jerks his head towards Jimmy. “He graduated from Stanford. Sumna cum awesome.”

“Shut up,” Jimmy mutters. He grins over at Robert anyway, and lets Robert reach over and pinch his cheek. John glances away, out towards the night. Family business. He’d been thinking of teaching Dean to shoot, take him out on Bill’s property and set up a couple of cans on a fence, letting him shoot dry until he was comfortable with it, the weight of it in his hands. He wouldn’t even be thinking about it but Dean’s taken to following him out lately, never asking for it but just watching, his eyes big and dark the way they used to be, when he wasn’t talking or looking anybody in the face but his Daddy.

It could be a birthday present, he thinks, pleased with the idea for just a moment before he thinks of Mary, of what she’d think of Dean’s little hands wrapped around a gun.

“Are you okay?” Jimmy asks, his voice soft.

It startles him, a little. He glances up and then away again, clears his throat. “Yeah, I was just ...” He almost doesn’t say anything, but a laugh, quiet and uncomfortable, comes bubbling out of his chest. “I was just thinking about my boys.”

He doesn’t see his rescuers stiffen, glancing down at his lap as he digs into the pocket of his jeans. “Got two of ‘em ... six and two.”

“What?” Jimmy says, low and flat, nearly overlapped by Robert’s “What’d you just say?”

John pauses, his wallet in his hand, but any reply he’d care to make is cut off as Robert stands abruptly. He’s a little shorter than Jimmy, probably a little shorter than John himself, and he glares down at both of them. “No,” he says. “You know what? Fuck this. Fuck you,” he says to Jimmy, “and fuck you,” he adds, to John. “I’ve had it up to here with all of this crap - no, fuck off, seriously,” he says as Jimmy grabs at him, stepping neatly away before he spins on his heels and stalks into the darkness, pausing only to kick open the circle that had been carefully drawn into the sand.

They’re quiet for a long time. John almost wants to ask Jimmy if he’s gonna go after his boyfriend or what, but Jimmy just looks at him with these sad, unreadable eyes, and after a few moments shuffles over on his knees to John’s side of the fire and says, hesitantly, “If you’ve got pictures in there, can I see?”

 

-

 

“He thinks it’s 1985.”

He can’t see Dean but Sam knows that he’s out there. The horses wicker at him, the gray stretching its neck out in hopes of a nose rub or a carrot or something. Sam pats it absently, staring into its placid face.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “I got that, thanks.”

It takes him a moment to find Dean, who’s sitting up against the outlying building, his knees drawn up, his head tilted back. Sam sits next to him, gingerly, leaving a couple feet between them. Dean doesn’t look at him. From this angle, the horses’ thick bodies block out nearly all the stars.

“What do you think this is?” Sam asks. “Some sort of apparition?”

“He’d been bleeding when he came out earlier. I know you saw it.”

Sam settles carefully against the wall, a few feet away from Dean, mindful of the space between them. “If he’s physical,” Sam says softly, and then Dean cuts him off.

“It’s not him.”

“What if it is?”

“It’s not him.”

Sam edges a bit closer. “He says he came out here on a hunting trip and lost some sort of contest with a spirit, and he’s been wandering the desert ever since. It’s been at least a few days, maybe a week - long enough that he should’ve died, or at least been close to it, but apart from some dehydration and the rock salt in his chest, he’s pretty much okay. I was thinking - we’re sitting on a ley line, right? All we’ve been doing is trying to open a connection to whatever it that Bill sent us after - what if he’s been walking some sort of Path of the Dead and it led him straight to us?”

Dean grunts. Sam scoots closer. “I’m not saying that it’s - that it’s us. That we did this. I don’t think - he’s not Dad, not really. I mean, he is, or he might be, but we didn’t call up his spirit. We made sure that that wasn’t possible.”

“So what is he?” Dean says, unwillingly. He’s still not looking at Sam but he lets his shoulder slip down against Sam’s.

“He’s young,” Sam says, and can’t find anything else to say. He’s thought it out, added up the numbers and whoever Sam left sitting by the fire with the last rabbit ka-bob is younger than they are now. He’s missing two scars on his face and the beard that covers up the one high on his throat but what’s bothering Sam the most is his eyes. They’re different in a way he can’t put his finger on, not yet.

Dean’s shoulder is warm against Sam’s. “I’m starving,” he says. “It’s been three days. This isn’t working. All the visions I’m having are of steak and beer. I’m done with this.”

Sammy lets his head hang down, his hands dangling between his knees. “Yeah,” he says. “You already left the circle, whatever contact we made has probably been broken anyway.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. Everything that they can’t bring themselves to say fills up the air between them, thick, the weight of years behind it. Sam doesn’t look over when he lays his hand over the back of Dean’s neck but eventually, Dean’s whole side is pressed against him, shoulder and elbow and hip.

“What if,” Dean says, and clears his throat. “What if it is him?” Sam can feel him breathing, feel the thud-thud of Dean’s heartbeat. “What if he figures it out?”

Sam turns his brother’s face towards him, close enough that the hand that was around Dean’s neck slips easily around and cups his cheek. Two years ago, Dean wouldn’t have let him but he allows it, closes his eyes and lets Sam tug him forward. The stars are bright enough that Dean’s eyelashes leave smudgy shadows on his cheekbones.

Dean hesitates for just a second, long enough for Sam to think he’s going to say something, _he’ll see_ or _but what if_ or just _no_ , the way he used to. Sam steels himself for it but Dean only makes this _sound_ low in his throat, and when he kisses Sam it’s desperate in the way it used to be, back when they barely had the space to breathe. And when Sam kisses back it’s just as hard, biting Dean’s lips, and he doesn’t have to admit that he has no answers for Dean, that he’s scared too.

  



	2. hansbekhart

  


Dean dreams of the desert sometimes, stretching out empty and cold even when an impossible sun beats down on the back of his neck. He’s always alone in these dreams, the certainty of it so deep in his bones that he never calls out, never thinks of looking for his dad or for Sammy. Two boys six and two stirred memories in some long forgotten corner of his brain, of being left at the edge of a wasteland with a pack of dogs and the reminder to make sure that the baby always wore his hat in the sun. He spent most of that week or two looking after Sam, time a little hazy that far back, making sure Sam was clean and drank lots of water and never stayed out in the heat for too long. It surprises him a little that he forgot about that, god, they left the car with Bill and his dogs not even a week ago. They got the horses from Bill, too, stocked up on supplies and filled up on information.

Dean likes the desert when he’s awake, likes wide-open lonely spaces. He likes New Mexico. He’d been sitting in that damn circle for three days with no food or shelter, just a lot of water and maybe an HJ or three from Sam when he got bored, and he hadn’t gotten sick of the view by the time that thing showed up, wearing his dad's face.

There are mountains in the distance that look like they were made on some other planet, cut with great valleys where rain fell hard enough to scar the ground. There are boulders balanced on top of thin chimney stacks of rock that make him worry about how near they are to California earthquakes. It’s quiet enough that they can hear rabbits and mice scuttling under what little brush there is and when the wind is right, the entire desert disappears under clouds of dust. The sand’s the sort of white that makes him think of beaches on the other side of oceans he'll never cross.

He doesn’t mind the heat, either. Sam bitches but Sam bitches about everything. Dean sorta likes the way it makes them slow and sticky, how every hour feels like the afterward of awesome sex, stretched out and not talking. The morning’s the best time, though. When he wakes up, the light is pink and gray and Dean’s so fucking glad not to be outside anymore that for a little while he actually forgets what walked out of the desert two nights ago.

He rolls closer to Sam, presses his nose into the skin between Sam’s shoulder blades. He’s still a little careful of the scars on Sam’s back, even though they’re old enough to be almost as tan as the rest of Sam’s skin. Sam smells like sweat and worse. The last time they saw a shower they were sharing it, the day before they hit Billy’s and from there the desert, and they’re both gamy. Sam’s skin is damp against his mouth and face.

Sam’s slow to wake and he tugs one of Dean’s hands up over his chest and exhales, a long, thoughtful _hmmmmm_.

“Hmmm,” Dean mimics, moving his mouth close to Sam’s ear. “Should I blow Dean or should I fuck him? Hmmmmm.” He feels Sam laughing, a rumble of air underneath his hand.

“Hmmm,” Sam says again, shifting around until he’s more or less facing Dean, his chin tipped towards his chest, bumping against Dean’s forehead. It’s too hot to be doing this, hot enough that their skin sticks together as Sam slides his hips against Dean’s, Sam’s hair already damp when Dean closes his fingers around it. They don’t kiss, definitely too hot for that, both of them tasting like dust and morning breath and that’s just gross. Sam hitches Dean’s leg up over his hip and pushes a finger in, laughs when Dean hisses. Bites back. Moving together, then, when Sam’s finally in and they stop swearing and start groaning, Dean’s back arching, seeking friction. Sam’s reach long enough to wrap around his shoulder even when he’s bent all the way back, teeth bared.

“Dean,” Sammy says, urgently. “Fuck fuck _fuck_ ,” chanting it.

They lay next to each other for a while, afterwards, not touching, trying to get their breath back. They clean up with socks already crusty from the days they’ve been out here. And then, after they’re dressed and smell checked and Dean’s tugging on his shoes, Sam leans down and kisses him. Just presses their mouths together and breathes Dean in, and then lets him go and grins down at Dean as if he didn’t just make it impossible for Dean to breathe anymore, that fucker.

He’s still a little breathless when they step out into the sunlight. It feels a little weird to be walking around again. He wasn’t mobile long enough to get the lay of the land or figure out where the hiding places were, and he’s looking around instead of where he’s going and gives Sam a flat tire before he realizes Sam’s not walking anymore.

He has to sidestep a little to be able to see over Sam’s shoulder. The fire’s going, burned down just to coals, and Dad is kneeling at the edge of it keeping watch over the pot of cowboy coffee and the little grill, focused enough that he gives them the barest of nods before turning back and nudging at the edge of a piece of toast.

“Uh,” Dean says. John glances back up.

“Morning,” he amends, and grins up at them in a friendly, lopsided sort of way. His lips are still cracked but otherwise he looks pretty good, younger but still Dad, feeling fine after a good hunt. It makes Dean’s stomach clench.

“Mighta put too much cold water into the coffee,” John says. “Been a while since I’ve been camping. Your gear's a little unfamiliar.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “I’m gonna go - over there. Catch you cats on the flip side.”

Sam grabs him by the elbow as he tries to escape. “Dean,” he hisses, his mouth almost up against Dean’s ear. It hasn’t been long enough since Sam was tangled around him for that light touch not to be humiliatingly hot, and Dean freezes. "Come on,” Sam says lightly, as if his fingers weren’t digging into the soft skin on the inside of Dean’s arm. “Sit down, we need to figure out our next step.”

Dean hunkers, scowling, Sam settling between him and the thing that looks like their dad. They dug the fire pit in the lee of the buildings and it’s still in the shade. The sand is nearly cool underneath his hands.

“So,” Dean says, and it’s a physical effort not to punctuate the sentence with a pointed _Sammy_ , “What’s our next step.”

John glances up and then back down. “Well, the vision quest is a bust,” Sam says, snapping Dean’s attention back to his brother. “We’d have to start all over again and we don’t have enough supplies for that.”

“It wasn’t working anyway,” Dean says.

Sam ignores him. “So we go with your plan.”

“Would’ve been quicker anyway.”

“Michael’s in El Paso, last time I heard. We can ask him to pick it up for us. He’ll know where to find something like that.”

“Don’t sound so prissy, _Jimmy_ ,” Dean says. “And why the hell is Mikey in Texas? Bobby actually letting the kid out of his sight these days?”

“I guess so, if he’s in Texas. Ask him when he gets here, _Robert_.”

John clears his throat. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’re you two hunting?”

“Jackalope,” Dean says, at the same time that Sam says, “We don’t know yet.” They glare at each other for a long moment.  
  
“We’re not really sure,” Sam says again. “There’ve been reports of some disturbances in the area - we have a friend who comes out here to do ceremonies, and something chased him off the land this month. There’s nothing that turns up in any history - no massacres, no mysterious deaths, nothing. Just -” he waves helplessly, and John surprises them both by speaking.

“It’s the badlands,” he says.

“Yeah,” Sam says slowly. “Pretty much. That’s why we came on horses. You’re not allowed to bring cars out here.”

John laughs. “I brought mine.”

Dean kinda has to laugh at that, the thought of the Imapala rolling over the desert as if it owned the land, the engine’s growl echoing off the mountains. Yeah, that was good. But - “So why were you walking, then?”  
  
John shrugs. “She died about an hour in. Didn’t overheat, had plenty of water, plenty of gas. She just stopped. Figured it was something in the area so I took what I needed and started walking.”  
  
“Should’ve brought a horse,” Dean says. “Strapped it to the roof or something. Could’ve rode shotgun. If Jimmy can fit in there -” He breaks off abruptly. He can feel Sam’s eyes on him but John’s staring off into the distance, squinting. The sun’s up over the horizon. There’s sweat drawing down the line of John’s temple and Dean wants to scream. John should’ve taken one look at them and seen Mary’s eyes and his own jaw set in stubborn lines. It’s been a lot of years and a lot of miles since Dean’s seen his dad’s face outside of a photograph but he knew John even before Sammy dragged his body into the circle of light. Knew his dad in the ragged jeans John was wearing, in the shape of his shoulder, just visible past Sam’s bulk.

“What?” John asks, absently.

“Oh,” Dean says. He flaps a hand at Sam. “Sasquatch here has trouble with doors sometimes.”

“ _Once_ ,” Sam says under his breath, and John chuckles. It’s an indulgent sound, the sort he used to make when they were fighting in the backseat and hadn’t pissed him off yet, and Dean glances away, blinks hard.

“Toast’s up,” John says. “Coffee, too. Where do you keep your cups?”

Sam grimaces. “I’m not hungry. I’m gonna give Michael a call, set everything up.”

“Robert?” John asks.

“Sure,” Dean says, and goes to dig some cups out of their gear. Sam’s already on the satellite phone when he gets back, pacing circles a few yards away from the fire John’s putting out. He crunches a piece of toast between his teeth, barely noticing how avidly John’s watching Sam. It’s just a little burnt, the way they always had to eat it before Dean learned how to cook, and he can almost hear Sammy bitching about carcinogens before John taps him on the shoulder with the back of two fingers.

“What is that?” he asks. “Some sort of radio or something?”

For a moment Dean just looks at him, not quite getting it, then he looks from Sam’s phone to John to the phone again. “Oh _fuck_ ,” he blurts, flinching instinctively, still expecting a wallop on the back of the head for language. John just looks at him, only vaguely curious. It’s the first time he’s looked into his dad’s eyes since John stumbled out of the desert and his mind goes blank. “You’re in the future,” he says, and winces. “Wow, this is awkward.”

“What?” John says blankly.

“Yeah,” Dean says, scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah. Guess you didn’t see any DeLoreans out there in the badlands, huh?”

“I - _what_?” John says again, his voice getting louder. He’s flexing his hands around the coffee cup, which was never a good sign.

Behind him, he hears Sam say, “Hey, Michael, lemme call you back. Something’s come up.”

“Guess that’s not out yet where you come from,” Dean says. “You should give it a go when you get back. Take your kids. They’ll dig it. Seriously.”

“This isn’t possible,” John says. “It’s not possible.”

“Well, it’s better than demonic manifestation, which was what we were originally thinking,” Dean says thoughtfully.

“No,” John says. He looks between Dean and Sam, his eyes wider than Dean’s ever seen. “No, this isn’t possible. I have to get back, my boys - I’m all they have, I have to get back to them!”

Dean blinks. It’s not what he’s expecting. Sam settles next to John, his hand extended as if to offer comfort. He puts it back against his own knee, hesitantly, looking at Dean. “I’m sure they’re okay,” he says softly. “We’ll find a way to get you back.”

“How do you know?” John asks. "Why didn't you _say_ anything?" The appeal goes to Sam, which - hurts a little bit. But this guy, whoever he is, whatever he is, it’s not Dad, Dean thinks. Doesn’t matter anyway what he thinks or who he’s talking to. Dean has to admit he hadn’t gone out of his way to make a friend. Sammy’s eyes widen a bit, glancing back to Dean again; _because you’re our dad_ would need a lot of explaining. But Dean’s been lying for his entire life, and the man who trained him - or at least, some version of him - is sitting right there, waiting for an answer.

“We went through your wallet after Jimmy knocked you out,” Dean says. “Your driver’s license expires in 1986, and so does the uh, condom we found in there.”

John doesn’t say anything, his shoulders curling in on themselves, his head down between his hands. He just breathes for a moment, and Sam and Dean stare at each other, at a loss.

“Look,” Sam tries, “have you thought that maybe you’re ... on a parallel track or ... or you got back in time and nothing changed? Because if - if you’re John Winchester, then we’ve heard of you. And your boys. So - it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

John’s head lifts, slowly. He’s got the look of a drowning man on his face, but he fixes Sam with a look that once made Sam cry. “You’ve heard of us?” he asks slowly.

“Yeah,” Sam says comfortingly, “haven’t we, Robert?”

Dean could kill Sam sometimes, he really could. John’s looking at Dean now, his eyes hard. “Sure,” he says, and then ups the ante. “We met your sons a few years back, actually. They’re pretty famous, in the uh, hunting world. Kill any evil son of a bitch that crosses their path.” John's got an unfamiliar look on his face, blank and nameless, something Dean’s never seen before. But John says nothing, just blinks at him, and Dean keeps talking, tries to fill up that silence.

“We’d just come off a job ourselves and were holed up at a friend’s place, Jim Murphey’s, don’t know if you know him yet or anything.”

“Yeah,” John says. It’s nearly a whisper. “Yeah, Jim’s a good friend.”  
  
“He’s a good man. Old friend of the Winchesters, I guess, they went back a long time. You - John - showed up with the boys, threw your stuff around as if you owned the place -”

John cuts him off abruptly. “What are their names?” he asks sharply. “You keep saying _the boys_. If you’ve met them, then what are their names?”

And for a long moment, Dean just looks at him. He can feel the words in his throat, just beneath his tongue. They’re easy words. He’s been saying them all his life. Only a couple of syllables, one more if he says Sammy rather than just Sam. He licks his dry lips.

“Dean,” Sam says. “And Sam. Sam’s the younger one. Dean looks a lot like you do. They’re strong. They’d just come from a job, where they’d gotten pinned down in an old office building just outside of Topeka, separated there.”

Dean’s mouth twitches. He’d almost forgotten about that. They’d flushed out a den of werewolves and managed to cross a state line before the cops showed up, both from the town they’d just come from and the one they’d been run to ground in. Dean spent six hours in an air duct - John had had the sense to clear out immediately and had holed up in a park nearby. They'd both thought Sam was with the other.

“Sam made some dumb mistake, gave himself away to the cops, but they only had him for an hour or so when Dean showed up at the local precinct, telling them he was an agent with the FBI. Kept them busy just long enough for John - you - to slip in the back way and get Sam out.” Sam’s staring at his hands by the time he finishes the story, a wry little smile playing around his lips that makes Dean want to slap it off of him, certain Sam’ll give the game away.

Sam looks up again. “They’re good, John. Real good. You should be proud.”

But John’s looking away from them, hardly seeing, and suddenly it’s his dad that Dean wants to slap. Or punch, or grab tight and never let go because goddammit, he always looked that way, his eyes following the next horizon or the next bend of the road.

And then John smiles. Slow, private, another expression Dean’s never seen on his dad’s face. “So they’re okay,” John says. “They’re alive. Good. That’s good.”

Sam nods slowly. “Yeah. Sure.”

 

-

 

Sometimes, it’s all that John can think about. His sons taken away from him, in the hands of strangers. Sometimes, most of the time, he knows that maybe it would've been better if he’d left them with his sister or their grandmother or even just threw up his hands and gave the baby, at least, to Social Services, but even the thought of it makes his heart feel like it could burst right open and run like melted wax down his chest. He thinks about Sammy growing up and John never knowing what he looked like, of Dean losing all that baby fat and freckles.

John sits by the ashes of the campfire while Jimmy and Robert bustle around him, cleaning things up and making plans. Someone called Michael is due the next day and Robert’s unhappy about it, at a loss for things to do out in the badlands but all that John can do is prop his back against a rock and think, okay. They’re okay. He hasn’t spent more than a few days away from them for over two years, since before Mary was murdered, since before Sammy was born. The sun climbs high overhead and John thinks that maybe he should offer to help out with something, something that needs doing or cleaning, maybe just to say thanks because his momma raised him right, but he just sits and stares and eventually they all shuffle out of the sun and into the shade where the air smells like dust and stone.

It’s a good kind of heat, almost; with two other people near him, sweat pouring off of them, it’s wet enough that breathing doesn’t hurt, doesn’t have that dry twinge to it that makes him want to hold his nose closed, afraid of another nosebleed. He sweats enough that he starts to feel clean, and they shoot the shit and Jimmy and Robert tell him of hunts and chases and the things they’ve done. He can believe that they’ve been hunting their whole lives even though he knows that Jimmy and Robert aren’t their real names, knows that they’ve probably got their own reasons for not telling him what their mothers call them when they come home.

And it’s strange, watching them, watching them together. John’s never really been around queers before, never knew them outside of grainy images on a television screen, broadcast from faraway California. There were two guys in his unit in Vietnam, but that was desperation, hard times away from women that you didn’t have to pay for, same as prison inmates. This is different, strange to him. And it’s weird that they’re not wearing dresses, that they don’t lisp but have the same sort of accent that he does, flat Midwest until he’s tired or trying to get something and then the drawl comes out. Jim’s been trying to teach him to drop the accent, blend in with any state, mimic any witness but it’s been just as hard as everything else he does these days.

What’s irritating is how he can’t stop thinking about it, that he turns to talk to Jimmy and his brain stutters out _queer_ , full stop, no thought or malice behind it, just ... the fact of it. That these two men, one of whom put him on the ground faster than anybody in John’s life, do ... that.

Which is another thing he can’t quit thinking about. They’re good. The kind of good that he wants to believe his sons will grow up to be. Way better then John is. He’s had some close scrapes in the last two years, beginner mistakes, stupid ones.

He doesn’t want to ask. Asking leaves the option of saying no and John’s a prideful bastard, always has been. But if it’s about protecting his boys, then it’s not about options or choices.

They’re talking over him, carrying on some conversation or other. Jimmy called Michael back on his cell phone - John almost can’t believe it’s a real phone, not some kid’s toy, it’s so small; Dean had one just like it, only his was bright green plastic and burned with the house and Mary - and Michael would be arriving sometime the next day, if he managed to stop bitching about having to ride a horse.

“Nice kid,” Robert says, by way of introduction and explanation. “A few fries short of a Happy Meal, maybe.”

He’d be bringing them more supplies - Robert and Jimmy were vague about how much longer they were going to be out in the badlands, vague about being able to return John from where he came, and the sons of bitches just grinned when John asked what the hell they’d really asked Michael to get.

There's a whiteout around twelve hundred hours and they crouch under blankets until it passes, sneezing and laughing. They check the gear and the horses and when everything's put to right, Robert breaks out the whiskey.

They alternate water and shots. It’s heady, drinking outdoors, shrinking from the sun. It’s at least 100, some sort of hell temperature that John can’t even compare to Vietnam but Robert and Jimmy bear up with it more or less stoically, stripping off their shirts and tipping water over their head. They laugh a lot, even though John can see the tension in the set of their shoulders, in the way their heads turn to follow every sound, absently. They’ve got more stories than most of John’s war buddies.

When John takes his own shirt off, Robert’s eyes move up and down John’s body, his eyebrows drawn together. Not exactly looking him over, not the way a woman would, just ... looking. Lingering a little on the healing dimples on John’s chest, where Jimmy shot him full of rock salt. It’s hard for John not to put the shirt right back on but they’ve got the right idea of it and after a moment, he tosses the shirt through the doorway they’re sitting next to. And it’s hard not to look himself when Robert’s turned back to Jimmy, track a bead of sweat sliding down his throat. It’s not the way a woman would look. It’s not the way that John looks at women. It’s just looking.

“Just sitting around on my ass is driving me nuts, dude,” Robert gripes, his vowels lazy and stretched. “All I’ve done since we got here is sit on my ass, when the hell are we going to go kill something? This sucks.”

“Go beat off,” Jimmy says, without looking up from his notebook. John snorts. Robert’s eyes flicker over to him and then away, wide as if he was shocked that John laughed.

“Yeah,” he says, “and that’ll kill ten minutes -”  
  
“That’s optimistic,” Jimmy mutters.

“ - shut the fuck up, but then what? Can’t Mikey get here any faster?”

“Wanna fight a bit?”

The words are out before John knows he’s talking, loose with beer and whiskey and company. “I’m serious,” he says. “It’ll kill some time, wear you out, and I want to know what you know.”

They glance at each other and then back at him. “What do you mean?” Jimmy asks, warily.

John is quiet for a long moment, considering his words. They’ve been on his mind since Jimmy put him on the ground faster than anybody since John’s daddy, giving John his whacks for picking on his little sisters. “You guys are good,” he says slowly. “You’ve been in this game for a long time. I haven’t, and that cost me the other night.” He rubs a hand over his chest and Jimmy winces. “I’m trying - I’m trying to keep my family safe. So while I’m here, drinking your water, eating your food, horning in on your hunt, there’s something else I gotta be a pain in your ass about, and that’s it. Teach me.”

They’re quiet for a long time, then Robert tips his bottle back and empties it, his throat working. “Wow,” he says. “I haven’t heard monologuing like that since you first started going all Haley Joel on me, Jimmy.”

Jimmy’s just looking at Robert, his eyes troubled. He meets John’s gaze without flinching but there’s a lot in there that John can’t read. “John,” he says, and then Robert cuts him off, grinning.

“All right,” he says. “Let’s go. I haven’t kicked a Marine’s ass in a while.”

 

-

 

At the end of the ghost town, meager collection of buildings that it is, there’s a barn, with high, dusty rafters and a hard packed floor. It sits in the lee of the tallest hill in the narrow valley that their camp sits in and in the afternoon the shadows stretch forward and cover it from top to bottom. It still smells a little of horses, some gamy trace of something living lingering in the narrow stalls, in wood sucked bare of all moisture.

Robert circles John, his arms relaxed at his sides, watchful. Jimmy settles against the entrance of a stall, arms folded over his chest. The expression on his face isn’t a threat, not exactly.

It’s been a long time since John’s had his ass kicked good and proper and he thinks he’s kind of looking forward to it.

The first strike comes hard and fast, Robert shifting back onto one leg before John even realized he was within range, his foot snapping forward and up in a roundhouse kick. It slices through the air only inches from where John’s kidneys should’ve been. John twists back just in time and goes stumbling against the stalls.

Robert’s bouncing a little on his feet now, his hands up and ready. “Chuck Norris checks his closet for me at night,” he says, grinning, and launches himself forward.

John fights the way he’s been taught, heavy on the offense, targeting the soft places on a man’s body, the throat, the belly, the testicles. Robert steps around John like he’s moving in slow motion, not dancing but just moving, heavy in his shoulders and joints like an animal, just waiting for the right moment to strike. He teases John a little, snaps out the heel of his palm and gets John right on the chin, sending him stumbling again. This time he hits the stall next to Jimmy, who gives John a push back up. John gets his first good hit to Robert’s belly and the grunt it forces out of Robert is almost worth the ache that’s already stiffening up John’s jaw.

“Where’d you learn this?” he huffs out.

“Some guy,” Robert grunts.

John’s winded but grinning, laughing outright, breathless. It gets a bit of a grin out of Robert, whose mouth twists as he bounces on his feet, too impatient to wait for John’s next move. John sees his opportunity and takes it, grabbing Robert’s arm above the wrist as the next punch comes for him, aiming to twist it up and away from Robert’s body, far enough away to get a shot near his armpit. For a moment he’s sure he’s gotten a good shot in, fucking _finally_ , and then he feels Robert’s muscles lock and his bulk thrown forward, hard against John’s side, and then away, yanking them both forward. And he knows what’s going to happen, can feel it even as his fingers loosen and Robert’s legs spread to brace them both and then Robert’s arm is around his neck and it’s too late to do anything.

He’s behind John before John’s even realized his hands are clenched around air, one arm thrown around John’s throat and the other pressed against the side of John’s skull, completing the loop of muscle and bone cutting John’s air off. He scrabbles instinctively, his blunt fingernails digging into Robert’s forearm. His knees hit the dirt and his hands go up in surrender at the same time, but it’s a long, breathless moment before Robert releases him and steps back.

“Damn,” John wheezes. “ _Damn._ ”

He’s got both palms flat on the ground. Robert’s boots clump a wide, wary circle around him. “Sorry,” he blurts, and John’s surprised enough to glance up. “Sorry,” Robert says again, flinching back.

“Sorry for what?” John asks, coughing. “Help me up, you son of a bitch.”

Jimmy’s the one that takes John’s hand and hauls him to his feet. Robert claps a hand to John’s shoulder like his smile isn’t twitching at both ends. “They leave out submission holds in Boot Camp?”

“Been a couple years and two kids since then,” John says, offering a grin back, watches Robert’s get even stiffer. He blinks a couple times, and for the first time they look at each other, really look each other right in the face, and John sees that Robert’s eyes are the same shade of green that Mary’s were. He hasn’t looked for her in other people in a long while and it staggers him a little, standing close enough to Robert that he can smell the other man’s sweat.

_Queer_ , his brain whispers.

Jimmy shifts a little bit closer to Robert, puts one hand out between their bodies and rests the tips of his fingers in the small of Robert’s back, subtle, like John’s not supposed to notice. He doesn’t, not really, doesn’t even glance down, just meets Robert’s eyes, Mary’s eyes, and waits for his heart to stop beating so goddamn fast.

  



	3. hansbekhart

  
Dean copes for the rest of the afternoon, through another hour or two of submission holds, his dad’s arms around his throat or the other way around, and by the time they call it quits John’s doing better. Not great, but better, and when he puts Dean on the ground for the first time Sam calls a time-out and says he’s hungry. They’re running a little low on supplies; only counted on being out in the badlands - now that John’s said it Sam can’t stop thinking it - for a few days, maybe a week, but they’ve got enough to string together an early dinner, the shadows long on their faces.

They brought a six-pack out with them, something to cut the booze and water that they’d be drinking the rest of the time, but it turned to syrup in the can the minute the temperature reached past 100. Sam doesn’t drink any more than he has to, to keep a bartender from glaring at him or Dean from making fun of him, but he thinks he might actually kill for a beer right now, something to cut the heat, cold enough that it burns going down.

Sam’s tired. The heat is getting to him but feeling like he’s on a tightrope is even worse, waiting for Dean or John to explode. It feels weird to be in the middle, walking a thin line between his brother and some bizarro version of Dad, who seems almost oblivious to the tension in Dean’s shoulders, the dead look in his eyes. He’d almost forgotten the way that Dean was in those first few months after Dad died, after the crash and before the war, and it’s a physical ache to remember it.

John’s in high spirits. He’s either blind or trying to lighten the mood, but it’s hardly helping. Dean gets smaller by the minute, tucking himself into a neat, expressionless package. There’s a little bit of blood dried on the soft spot under John’s ear that Dean watches, ignoring Sam watching him. Sam’s gotten used to it.

“So I’m thinking,” Sam says, squatting by the doorway, “that we should go on a snipe hunt.” They’re spread out in the largest building in the meager ghost town, the only two-story, standing or sitting in what might’ve been the dining room at the back of the house or might’ve been where they butchered animals, for all that was left of the human hands that built it. It was where they put John when he walked out of the desert and his stuff - their stuff, the sleeping bag that they hadn’t been using, the water bottle that had hung off of Sam’s pack - was packed neatly in one corner.

John stares at him. Dean stares at him. “Are you joking?” John says, and he sounds so uncertain that it’s really hard not to laugh. John’s frowning a little, a crooked smile still caught on his face, as if he’s mostly sure Sam is kidding but not quite sure if this is something big bad hunters should know about. It’s not funny, not at all, but Sam grins a little anyway, tries to hide it with his hand.

“No,” Sam says, trying on his sincere face, “they’re real. They’re like snakes, actually. But fatter.” He almost makes it but he’s never been able to cultivate a poker face, and John bursts out laughing. Dean flinches at the sound.

“Actually, we’re running low on water and I thought we could scout around, find some cacti that, that Robert and I haven’t tapped yet, check the snares.” He catches himself waiting for permission even as John’s nodding willingly. He doesn’t look at his brother. Dean’s moved his stare onto Sam’s shoulders, his chin lowered almost to his chest, saying nothing. That’s okay.

It’s getting late enough in the day that their shadows ripple over the hills as they walk, jostling for space, merging from three shadows to one and back again. A comfortable sort of silence settles over them and that hurts more than seeing John play fan boy to his oldest son. Maybe this is what Dean thought their family was all along.

They split up about half a mile out of camp, where the ground drops off abruptly into a sheer cliff face, marbled with time. There are a thousand different ways to get down where flash floods have worn little channels in the stone and Dean is over the edge as soon as Sam says boo, kicking footholds into the cliff. They’d left most of the snares near the hoodoos in the valley, where the grass was thicker and they could actually see the tracks. John and Sam look at each other for a moment and Sam almost says something about Dean and cliffs and jumping face first. Instead, he gives John a nod, tells him to just head back to camp when he’s filled his bag, and heads east.

He wanders for a while, finds a couple of cacti, small and fat with stored water. The cacti are their last resort and the water tastes terrible even after purification but it’s easy enough to get. He works the top off with the hunting knife and scoops the pulp out, lets the water soak through the cheesecloth and into the wide mouth of the bag. He puts the top back on when he’s done and swats dust off his pants. The bag’s about half-full of foul smelling water. He’ll fill the rest up while he’s looking for Dean.

Dean makes it easy for Sam; his tracks are as clear as the rabbits, deliberate scuffles leading Sam away from the shale and onto the dusty floor of the valley, sidestepping his way around barrel cacti and scrub. It’s hot, even as the sun’s making its way behind the hills, still not far enough away from 90 to be comfortable. Last year, around this time, they were in upper New York, grounded by a snowstorm in the middle of exorcising a handful of demons. Routine enough, these days - like seeing old friends. Sam had liked the snow better.

He spots Dean about a quarter mile off, the broad line of his back clear enough in the shade of a low hoodoo. They make Sam’s palms itch, as if just by being near those weird formations, Dean's gonna bring one down on his head. He’s not doing anything but crouching near an empty snare, his wrists balanced on his knees. He turns when Sam’s about a hundred yards away and watches him approach, expressionless.

“You wanted to talk?” he says, tipping his chin back to meet Sam’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Sam says. A snipe hunt’s another one of those things, those codes that Sam felt stupid thinking up. Snipe hunt is Winchester for _ditch the norm, we need to talk_. Funny to think of John that way, as a hindrance or some wide-eyed person in peril. As an outsider.

Dean pats the ground beside him, frowns vaguely when the sand scorches his palm. Sam hunkers down next to him. Their knees brush together.

“We might have a problem when Michael shows up tomorrow,” Sam says.

Dean grunts, not really looking at him. “We can head him off at the pass when he shows up. Tell him what names we’re using and to keep his goddamn mouth shut.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He rubs sweat off the back of his neck, around his mouth. “You think this’ll really work, then?”

Dean takes the easy interpretation, says, “It’s the best shot we have at getting in contact with this thing, short of a rain dance or whatever. We can’t stay here for much longer. It’s too fucking boring.”

“Not to mention we’re overstaying our welcome,” Sam says. Billy’s word only bought them so much time with the Res authorities, less time than they were hoping for.

“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Dean says. “Nighttime, so nobody wanders off and bakes in the sun.”

“You think he’ll want to come with?” Sam asks, and they both tense.

“He’s a regular eager beaver, ain’t he?” Dean says after a moment, which isn’t really an answer.

“It’s weird,” Sam says. “He’s almost - _friendly_. Was he really like this? Do you remember?”

Dean shrugs. “I’m still not sure it’s him.”

“What else could he be?” Sam asks, tiredly. “We did everything we could think of to make sure. He’s human. He’s alive. He’s got all the right ID. He’s got pictures of us, ones we’ve never even seen before.”

“He’s not Dad,” Dean says. And Sam can’t really say anything to that, not when Dean’s laid it flat between them, as if he’s said _it’s really fucking hot out here_ or _I love my car_. So Sam says nothing. Dean’s hand strays to the snare, running two fingers down the length of the wire. They checked the snares last night, after John fell asleep, skinned and gutted two skinny jackrabbits, ate them in a stew for lunch. No use in checking them again until after nightfall, when Thlayli or Fiver would have had a chance to trip a wire.

“He’s - not Dad,” Dean says again, more hesitantly this time. He’s gotten better at this, at not keeping everything to himself, but talking about John is still a real, physical effort for Dean, as if he has to force out each word from wherever he’d hidden it away. “I mean, did you see him? Dad was a Marine, he was a hardass. I took that guy out in like, five minutes tops. Dad -” And here Dean laughs, under his breath, “- Dad would never have gone for that feint and he’d have kicked my ass for even trying it. You know it, Sam. It’s not him. It can’t be.”

“He wasn’t Superman, Dean,” Sam says softly. He stares down at his hands. His thighs are cramping from staying so still, the fabric of his jeans pulling tight across his knees. Dean snorts. “He had to learn all that stuff, same as we did.”

“Yeah, but -” Dean cuts himself off, lapses back into silence. This close, Sam can smell his brother’s sweat, see it prickling the short hair around his ears. Dean always smells faintly of leather, no matter what he’s been wearing, the smell of it ground into his skin. Leather and sunscreen, now, the gamy scent of unwashed skin beneath it.

“It’s sort of like,” Dean says after a moment, hesitantly. Sam waits, not looking at Dean. “Even when we were really, really small, Dad knew everything. Whenever I stole something from the store. Whenever I didn’t make you brush your teeth. He always knew. He’d know I was going to try that stupid fake-out. He’d know -”

“- that it was you,” Sam finishes. “That it was us.” He knew he’d hit a nerve and Dean’s shoulders hunch like they’re on strings.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Maybe. So what.”

“All of this,” Sam says slowly. “You walked off last night because you were afraid that he would figure out who we were, and today you’re pissed off that he hasn’t? What the hell is wrong with you, Dean? What do you really want?”

“Peace on earth,” Dean snaps. “And blow jobs.”

“No,” Sam says. He moved without thinking about it and now his knees are on the sand, burning, but he’s got a fist wrapped around Dean’s collar and for now, it’s keeping his brother in place. “ _No_. Don’t fucking do this to me.”

Dean shifts a little, away from Sam, a smirk lifting the corner of his mouth. “What do you want me to say, man? Sammy, I’m freaking out because we’re stuck in the middle of the desert with our dead father, who’s now younger than I am, and waiting for him to figure out that his two sons are _fucking each other_ is kinda nerve wracking?”

For a moment, Sam can barely breathe. Dean’s leaning far enough away that the seam on his shirt is straining, his eyes flat, waiting for Sam’s response, like this is a fight he’ll win as easily as the one in the barn, Dad on his knees, his face turning red from lack of oxygen. “You’ve been waiting for this to happen,” he says.

Dean bats Sam’s hand away, gets to his feet. “Yeah, exactly. I totally thought that Dad would come through a portal in time and bust up our gay incestuous love affair, like, a year ago. Maybe for my birthday or something. Guess he forgot.”

He goes down when Sam punches him, knuckles connecting with the apple of his cheekbone. He lands flat on his back, eyes wide and stunned, and his hand’s only just coming up to touch his face when Sam’s fingers are back around his collar, hauling Dean to his feet.

“All this time,” Sam hisses, “All these _years_ -”

Dean just stares at him, sullen. His hands wrap around Sam’s but make no effort to shake Sam off. The sweat on Dean’s palms makes his hands slippery. “This isn’t some sort of - of cosmic justice, Dean,” Sam says. He can hear the desperation in his voice and so can Dean, who turns his head a little, like he’s embarrassed on Sam’s behalf. “I thought that you - that we were -”

He falters. Dean’s shaking his head. “Sammy -”

“Shut up,” Sam says fiercely. “Shut the hell up or I’ll punch you again.”

“Sam,” Dean says, soft this time. “It’s fucked up. It’s always been fucked up and no matter what - no matter how long this goes on, it’s not gonna change.”

“So you’re waiting for god to strike you down for it,” Sam says bitterly. “You’re such a fucking idiot, Dean.”

“Okay,” Dean says, smirking. “Whatever you say, Sammy. Hey, let’s go back to camp and pretend it’s all hunky dory, okay? Shoot the shit with Dad. Maybe we can ask him if we’ve got any inbred ancestors, that’d be fun. Come on. Hit me again, you’ve been waiting for it, I know. Come on. Come on, Sammy.”

He’s laughing when Sam tackles him, wheezy little gasps that don’t stop even when he hits the ground hard, Sam landing on top of him, knees on either side of Dean’s hips. He stops laughing when Sam presses a heel against Dean’s crotch, palms his cock through his jeans. Dean’s already hard and his hips buck up against Sam’s hand, and Sam might think about that if he wasn’t trying to tear Dean’s jeans open. He slams his other hand over Dean’s wrists when Dean starts fighting, pinning both of them on the ground. Dean’s good but Sam’s bigger, heavier. He wraps his fingers around Dean’s cock, pumps twice, his grip tight enough that it has to hurt.

The sound that tears itself out of Dean’s throat hurts just to hear it, Sam’s cock painfully hard, rubbing against unyielding denim and the broad muscle of Dean’s thigh. He’s rubbing against Dean’s leg like a dog, like some clumsy teenager.

“Fuck, _Sam_ ,” Dean groans. His fingers dig furrows in the sand. It’s hard for Sam to slow down, deep breaths, trying to ground himself on the feel of Dean underneath him, moving, but he does, jacks Dean’s cock as if he has all the time in the world to do it. “No,” Dean sobs and then his whole body is clenching up and he’s coming, head thrown back, throat working soundlessly. He turns his face away when Sam swings a knee off of him but Sam’s hands are already hauling him up, onto his knees, pushing his face towards Sam’s crotch.

Dean’s still for a heartbeat, pliant, and then both his hands come up to grip Sam’s hipbones, mouthing the line of Sam’s cock through his jeans. Wanting it now, working Sam’s pants down his hips, sucking and biting each inch of skin before he licks Sam’s cock into his mouth. He’s clumsy with it, spit drooling out of the corners of his mouth. Sam tilts his brother’s head up, feels the slide of his own cock through Dean’s cheek, almost comes from that alone.

Dean talks a lot, when they fuck, and Sam likes it - _a lot_ \- but he’s never been able to do it himself. Too embarrassed about it even if he can throw Dean up against a wall and fuck him hard enough to leave fingernail gouges. He can push Dean’s head between his legs and hook his ankles around Dean’s neck, guide Dean’s mouth to his asshole, but he can’t ask for it, can’t tell Dean to slide three wet fingers up his ass and stretch him wide.

It’s not that he can’t say the words. He’s just afraid of what else would come out. Of what Dean would say if Sam asked, _You want this, right?_

 

-

 

His hands slide down Sam’s throat, down the nape of his neck, pressing down on the sensitive muscles of Sam’s shoulder blades. The noise it presses out of his brother is tight, hissing - caught between his teeth. He can’t see Sam but he can smell him, sweat and skin and old clothes. Loves that about Sam, that smell, noses for it in the soft place under Sam’s jaw, his ear. They’ve done this before - holed up so far from civilization that when they fuck it’s so dark they have to go slow or wind up punching the other in the face.

When he stretches, knees on either side of Sam’s thighs, he can feel where Sam’s hands are tied together, flexing slow - pulling - shaking - tremors running up and down Sam’s arms. Strangle knot around his wrists and that’s the first thing that twinges because Dean knows how to lay a knot and that one’s a bitch to undo and he never, ever uses it on a person. He wants to stop moving, to grope for the knife that has to be under the pillows he can’t feel, let Sam loose, but his hands and mouth and hips move, pushing his cock against Sam’s ass.

Sam _groans._ Stirs under Dean’s hands but he feels weak, wrong. It shudders down low in Dean’s belly but his hands keep moving, his tongue tracing down Sam’s spine, over the scars, the dimple in his spine that never healed right, Sam’s skin hot under his mouth. Heartbeat pounding in Dean’s ears even though he -

\- sobbing, in and out, not Sam because he’s lying underneath Dean, as still as if he’s knocked out or just waking up from it, something at the edge of Dean’s hearing underneath the beat-beat of Sam’s heart, could be his name or nothing at all -

He swallows two of his own fingers, sucks them deep, swirls his tongue over and around and gets them wet enough to push into Sam’s ass, too fast, it’s not something Sam likes all that much so they don’t do it unless Dean really asks for it. Feels fucking amazing, now - his cock pushing against Sam’s crack, brushing the back of his own knuckles. It hits in his belly, the small of his back, all the unexpected places that fucking Sam drags out of him, and he wraps his other hand around his cock and holds Sam steady with the other. Pushes. Sinks into his brother, spine curved and shaking with the effort.

He thinks he can hear Sam calling his name. Whispering. Screaming it, maybe, the sound so far off he can’t even be sure. Noise crawling over his skin like tiny animals, like insects in the darkness, like his fingers curving over Sam’s hips.

Louder now, Sam crying like he used to, when he was small enough to curl up in bed with Dean. The Sam he’s touching finally starting to move, clenching around Dean’s cock, fucking back against him almost accidentally. “Sammy,” Dean says - hears the word like it’s whispered into his own ear - needing to hear Sam say he’s okay, that it feels good. Dean’s hips snap forward, fucking Sam deep. His hands shake on Sam’s skin. “Sammy, please!”

Sam’s moving now, shifting or struggling, trying to get his knees up underneath him. He wants to move back, stop moving until Sam’s okay, but -

He gags when his teeth close over the raw skin on Sam’s back. He’s seen it, touched it enough times to know where his mouth is, at the edge of the burns, faint and pink and sensitive. He actually thinks he’s going to throw up for a minute, the muscle in his jaw tensing because now he’s sure. Sam’s not getting up because Dean’s tied his legs down too, and he’s trying to get away because one of Dean’s hands is holding him down and the other one is digging hard into the scar in the small of his back, the one that never really stopped hurting, his thumb pressing down hard enough that it hurts _Dean_.

“Sam, Sam,” he gasps, his whole body tight, so close to orgasm that he wouldn’t be able to slow down if he could, dream, a dream a dream this has to be a dream. When he comes it bursts across the back of his eyes and then, superimposed over darkness and oil-slick colors, he sees the curve of Sam’s shoulder, not underneath him but only inches from his face. It disappears when he blinks, his eyelashes brushing against his skin and for a long moment, he can only breathe, wiped out, panting harshly, and then it happens.

He realizes that he’s still grinding his thumb against Sam’s spine only a second before the nail rips away from the skin, snapping the same way he’s seen girls pull fake nails off, and the pain shoots right up his arm, lancing down his spine even as his ruined thumb breaks Sam’s skin and sinks into meat too soft to still be on a living person.

He’s still feeling it when it finally hits him that he’s awake, tangled in the sleeping bag and halfway across the room from where Sam, amazingly, is still asleep. In the moonlight, his hair in his face, he looks like a very, very overgrown six year old. It only makes Dean feel worse.

He tugs a pair of jeans and a shirt on and goes out into the air. It’s stuffy inside the buildings even though there aren’t any windows to speak of, and he stands in the doorway and just breathes for a long time.

A voice comes out of the dark: “Hey.” Dean startles, turns around. John’s a few yards away from him, his hands in his pocket, a sheepish smile on his face.

“Hey,” Dean says. He keeps his voice low. “What’re you doing, honing your ninja skills out here?”

John shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep. Been sitting by the fire, but I thought I heard something, though I’d check it out.”

“Just me,” Dean says. He rubs a hand over the back of his neck. His fingers are still shaking.

“Yeah,” John says, and then, hesitantly, “You wanna have a drink or something? You don’t look too good.”

Dean lets his hand drop, takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

They finish off the bottle, sitting together at the edge of the fire. There wasn’t much left - just enough to take the edge of the nightmare off and make Dean feel a little warmer. John is quiet, watching the fire. Minding his own business.

“Thanks,” Dean says, after a long while.

John grunts. “Don’t mention it. It’s your booze, anyway.”

“S’pose so.” He remembers the fuss Sam kicked up when Dean wanted to bring alcohol, all the bitching about dehydration and desert temperatures and walking off cliffs. Billy handed them the bottle on the way out the door and the look on Sam’s face was just priceless.

“Had a nightmare,” Dean says. He feels stupid just saying it. This isn’t his dad and even if it was, there’ve been a lot of miles between now and the last time he needed to be comforted after a bad dream.

John nods. “Me too.”

Dean starts a bit at that, turns to look at John fully. “Really? Maybe it’s connected.” He hasn’t been able to sleep well since they got here but hadn’t thought much of it.

John shrugs, smiles a little. “Maybe. Happens to me a lot, though.”

“You, uh,” Dean says. “You get a lot of nightmares?”

John shrugs. “Fair bit, I guess. Seems pretty standard for our line of work, anyway. Not many people turn to hunting without a reason for it.”

It’s practically a written invitation to ask. Dean sets the bottle down carefully, watches the last few drops settle in the glass. “What are your nightmares about?” he says, swallowing what he really wants to ask. He knows the story anyway, of how John got into hunting. He was there, after all.

John stares into the fire and after a moment, so does Dean. It’s easier that way. “My wife,” John says, after a moment. “That’s not so bad, anymore. It’s mostly about my boys, these days.”

“How - why?” Dean asks.

John smiles, still staring into the fire. “It’s a big, scary world out there. I never really knew how scary it was, and ... I don’t know if I can keep them safe from all of it. I don’t think I can.” He laughs under his breath. “Wish you could meet ‘em. Dean, my oldest - kid’s a little pistol. Thinks he can take on the world. Practically attached at the hip to the baby, Sammy. But that’s - it’s good. We lost their mom when Sammy was just a few months old, it was hard on all of us.”

Dean licks his lips. His mouth is dry. His throat aches for more alcohol, for more sleep, anything. “You lost your wife?” he says.

John’s face hardens. “She was murdered,” he says. For a long moment, Dean thinks that’s it. That’s all he’s going to say. He’s tensing to stand when John grins, abruptly. “There’s this thing that Dean’s picked up, I don’t know where he’s gotten it from,” he says. “But it’s hilarious. He herds the baby around, like a little sheepdog. Little nudges, almost. I’m surprised he hasn’t started nipping at Sammy’s heels yet.”

“What?” Dean says, startled. “That’s freakin weird.” He’s almost a little offended. He remembers when he didn’t talk, remembers watching his dad relearn how to shoot and kill and defend, and he thinks he’d remember imitating Rin-Tin-Tin.

“He’s a funny kid,” John says. There’s still the slightest smile lingering around his mouth, and after a moment he adds, “He’s the bravest person I’ve ever known.”

If he could think clearly, Dean would be glad for the darkness, for the flickering light on their faces that hides the rush of blood to his face. He had almost forgotten what his dad said to him that day in the hospital, before he’d died - hadn’t told anybody about it, not even Sam. When Sam had asked him if Dad had said anything Before, Dean had said no. He couldn’t tell Sam the part that mattered, the secret part, but even more than that, couldn’t actually say _he was proud of me_ or _he loved me, he really actually did._ He hadn’t really thought Sam would care about that part, anyway.

He almost doesn’t hear it when John coughs a little, offers up an embarrassed smile, finally turning to look at Dean. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m not usually in the habit of pouring my guts out to strangers. You probably don’t give a shit about any of this, anyway.”

“No, uh,” Dean clears his throat. “It’s cool. I know how it is. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone who doesn’t know you. Or something. That’s what Dr. Phil says, anyway.”

John smiles thinly, but his eyes are wide. Knowing. So Dean keeps talking. “I never talk about my dad to anyone. Not even Jimmy. He - my dad died, god, it’s been six years now and I still - it’s like it happened yesterday, sometimes. We were ... real close, you know?”

“Not really,” John says. “My daddy kicked me out when I said I was gonna join the Army. Haven’t seen him since.”

“That’s not what -” Dean starts, and then catches himself. John’s looking at him, curious. “Nothing, I’m just surprised, is all. You seem like the family type.”

John grins openly at that. “That obvious, huh?”

“No,” Dean says. He looks away again. John’s still staring at him. “No, just - they’re most of what you talk about, dude. The first thing you told us about yourself was that you’ve got kids, and then, you know, the whole time travel thing, they were all you wanted to know about. If I found myself 20 years in the future, I think I’d want to, I don’t know, find out if the Sox ever won the Series or if disco ever really died.”

“You think you could track them down?” John asks suddenly. “Would you be able to call my boys up on that, that little phone of yours? Didn’t really think of it before, stuck out in the desert and all, but -”  
  
_“No,”_ Dean says.

John shuts his mouth, raises an eyebrow. Not challenging, not exactly. Waiting. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Dean says slowly. “I seem to remember a whole lot of movies with paradoxes and dead - and look, we’ve run into them a few times, we’re not exactly on their Christmas card list, you know? They - they don’t trust other hunters. Got a lot of reasons not to.”

John nods, after a moment. He looks back to the fire, staring hard. Looking fucking heartbroken in that way Dean knows pretty well, his eyebrows knitted together, his mouth drawn up tight. Keeping everything in. “Look,” Dean says. “Jimmy and me have seen a lot of stuff, you know? But never anything like this, this time travel thing. They wouldn’t even know what to think. Mikey’s gonna be here in the morning and we should be done with all of this tomorrow and we can, after that we can get you back to where you belong. Back to your boys. Okay? Don’t worry about it, John, okay?”

John keeps nodding, slowly. He’s got his hands up, bracing his chin, and he twists his wedding band around and around.

“Hey,” Dean says, “That Sam grew up to be a tall motherfucker, man. I guess he got his Wheaties when he was a kid, right?”

John’s mouth softens a little. “He eats a lot of Cheerios, these days. You uh, you think he looks anything like me?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “He’s got your smile.”

They’re quiet for a long time after that. They pass a jug of water back and forth between them, like some sort of G-rated version of what they were drinking earlier. Dean was twelve or so when Dad started letting him have sips of whatever he was drinking but Sammy had to wait until he was sixteen for official permission. Dean was giving him beer by then anyway, keeping it on the down low even though Dean’s pretty sure John knew all about it. There were years when it was just the two of them, Dean and Dad, huddled around campfires or case files, passing the bottle back and forth. Good years, even though he missed Sammy so bad it made him sick.

“Hey,” John says, clearing his throat. “Thanks.”

“What for?” Dean asks, warily.

“Ahh, you know,” John says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “For listening. There’s not a lot of chances for me to get any of this shit out. Not a lot of people who know what it’s like.”

“I don’t know what it’s like,” Dean mumbles. John shakes his head.

“Yeah, you do. I can see it in your face. Hunting’s a lonely thing, and my boys - they’re all I have. I’m not a good dad. Mary, my wife, she was so goddamn good, she always knew just what they needed and even after all this time, Dean still knows what the baby wants before I do. Look, I’m not trying to embarrass you, lord knows. Just - thanks.”

“No problem,” Dean says. “Hey, how about them Royals, huh? They um, exist in your time?”

“I don’t follow baseball,” John says, “What’s your real name?”

“What?” Dean says blankly.

John quirks a smile at him. “Come on.”

“That’s,” Dean says. “Um. Classified.” He cringes even as he says it, his face hot.

“You don’t ever use your real names?” John asks. He’s more curious than disappointed but shame prickles hot and heavy in Dean’s chest anyway.

“Sometimes,” Dean says slowly. He remembers being able to lie to his dad. “We had a lot of trouble with the Feds, a few years back. Popped up on their radar and couldn’t get off it. It’s - it took a long time to get better.” It’s the truth, just not all of it.

John just nods, open and trusting. Enough awareness in his eyes that he knows he’s being lied to. “Is this where I tell you I’m not a cop?” he says, grinning.

“No,” Dean says. He swallows, tries again. “No, just - don’t ask. I can’t tell you.”

“Okay,” John says. “I get it. Sorry I brought it up.”

“It’s okay,” Dean says. “Sorry I can’t tell you.”

 

-

 

Sam’s not where Dean left him, and Dean feels a brief stab of panic before he closes his eyes, waits for them to adjust to the darkness.

“You look stupid,” Sam says. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I can’t see,” Dean grunts. He gropes towards the sound of Sam’s voice and Sam reaches out to him, gathers Dean and guides him until he’s sitting the same way that Sam is, with his back up against the wall of their makeshift room, cross-legged on the hard packed floor. “How long you been awake?” Dean asks, warily, when he’s settled. Sam’s knee and shoulder press against his briefly, then relax. It’s hard not to flinch away from it and Dean stares hard until he can _see_ Sam, until he knows for sure he’s still awake.

“A while,” Sam says. “You woke me up when you got up.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He can feel Sam fidgeting. When they were young, before Sam hit that final growth spurt and shot past Dean and Dad in the span of a weekend, Sam used to curl up next to him, tuck his head under Dean’s chin and just sort of sigh deeply every now and again, working out his childhood angst or worry or whatever. Sam’s too tall for that now, unless they’re in bed.

“I wish I had known him,” Sam says finally, so soft that Dean can barely hear him. Little wounded voice in the dark.

“I wish you had too,” Dean says. “You heard all of that, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “I don’t think I ever thought of him as - as a person before. Even when I knew that he wasn’t perfect. I spent years being so angry with him for the way he raised us, for what he did to us, and I didn’t ever ...” He trails off. Dean can hear him breathing. All that he can see of his brother is the highlight on his nose and his cheeks, gold from the fire that Dean left their father sitting in front of.

“I know,” Dean says. He hears Sammy sniff a little, watches him wipe his eyes furtively from the corner of his own. “He did the best he could.”

“Was he really like that?” Sam asks, quiet like he doesn’t really want to know the answer.

“Like what?”

Sam doesn’t say anything. Dean tries to pitch his tone for gentle. It comes out colorless and he winces, knowing that Sam will notice. “Yeah,” he says. “He was like that. Didn’t talk about it often, mostly just, you know, around the time of year that Mom died, but - yeah.”

They sit quietly for a long time, just breathing into the dark. Dean’s hand finds its way to the back of Sam’s head, scratching a little under Sam’s hair, cupping the back of his brother’s skull. Dean’s eyes are heavy, itchy. He wants to go back to sleep, wants to start talking and just let all of it out, everything that’s stopping his throat up and making it impossible to breathe or think. He wants to ask, really, seriously, that Sam wants this. He wants his Dad back.

Dean takes a deep breath. “Sam -”

Sam shifts, scooting down the wall until his head is tucked against the curve of Dean’s neck and shoulder. It’s uncomfortable, totally awkward, his shoulders braced and his butt halfway across the floor, and he knocks Dean in the chin before he’s totally settled. It feels stupidly wonderful. “Yeah,” Sam says. “I know.”

  



	4. hansbekhart

  
It’s not the sun that wakes Sam up. It’s not bad dreams, though he’s had his share of them since they’ve been camped out in the badlands, full of fire and blood and bruises.

What wakes him up is the tinny sounds of his cell phone, playing “We Built This City” at top volume.

Dean makes a noise of utter suffering and throws his hands over his ears, scrunching up his face. “Sam make it stop,” he groans, the words all blurring together: _sammakeitstop._

Sam gropes for the phone, fumbles it open. “H’lo,” he mutters.

“Sam, hey! Heh, did I wake you up? Billy’s kicking me out of his house even though it’s like, the ass crack of dawn and I thought I’d share the joy. You guys got anything to eat out there? I think I have to ride a horse or something -”

“Michael,” Sam says. Michael stops dead, obediently. Sam rubs a hand over his face, takes a moment to appreciate the moment of quiet. “Slow down.”

“All that Billy’ll give me is coffee, the cheap fucker. Coffee and a horse. The fuck kind of people you guys know, Sam?”

“You get it?” Sam asks. Dean shifts enough to punch blindly in Sam’s direction and connects with Sam’s elbow.

“Shut the fuck up,” he growls.

“Yeah, of course,” Michael says in Sam’s ear. “Easy peasy. Anyway, Billy says it’ll take me an hour, hour and a half to get out to you guys, and I know how much you hate surprise wake up calls, so - I’m on my way. I’m starving. I’ve got water and food and illegal substances. I’ll see you in about an hour.”

“Kay,” Sam sighs. He flips his phone closed and stares up at the ceiling blindly. He doesn’t want to be awake. He doesn’t want to have to get up. He sighs again and pushes to his feet.

Dean grumbles a little when Sam pulls the sleeping bag off him, throwing Sam’s half of the bottom bag over Dean. Sam lays the other sleeping bag a few feet away, kicks his pillow over to it and nudges it with his foot until it looks slept in. Dean’s already asleep again, the bag slipping enough to show the broad line of his shoulders, the bruise just below his hairline, almost healed. When it was new there were two clear half-moons, where Sam had bitten down right over the ridges of Dean’s spine. Every time he’d seen Dean rub the mark, wincing, it had made him almost blindingly hard. Seeing it again, even half-healed, makes Sam want to mark Dean all over again, roll him onto his belly and lick the sweat off his skin.

But. Michael’s voice, even over the phone, is enough of a deterrent, even if John wasn’t out there somewhere, possibly awake even now. When Michael was staying with them, he was constantly underfoot, especially when he wasn’t wanted, and the prospect of his imminent arrival makes Sam’s stomach hurt.

The air is stuffed full of that breathless sort of silence that reminds Sam of California in the early summer, those few short weeks when El Nino’s gone for another year, before the summer heat rolls in, blanketing the coast with fog. It’s a bearable temperature, when the sky is pink and raw, but there’s a heaviness in the sky that sits uneasily, as if the desert is drawing breath to speak.

He stokes the fire up and sets a pot of water on to boil. They’ve been making cowboy coffee all week and there’s a couple of protein bars left in Sam’s pack, good enough for breakfast. There might be some dried rabbit for Michael to eat, if he’s that hungry. Sam’s feeling spiteful enough to hope that they drink all the coffee before Michael arrives.

It’s a while before anyone else is up; the pot boils and Sam makes himself a bitter cup of coffee, sets the pot on a flat rock in the coals to keep it warm. John materializes just when Sam’s finishing his first cup, and he fixes more for both of them. They watch the sun come up and Sam blinks sleep out of his eyes, inhales the smell. The last time he was alone with his dad, it was - he thinks it was the vampire deal. It’s hard to remember now. It was a long time before Sam could think about Dad without remembering Dad’s death, that sad smile he gave Sam when he said _please. I don’t wanna fight._

“You sleep okay?” Sam asks, finally.

“Well enough,” John grunts.

He didn’t even want to be there with Dad, stuck in some crappy room waiting for Dean to come back, feeling like his skin was about to crawl off his body. He hated John then, maybe not as much as he did when he was at school or when they were spending months running after the slightest scrap of contact. He’d been waiting for years to say - fuck, he didn’t even know anymore, it was so long ago. How could John leave them like that. How could he say all those things, tell his own son to get lost and stay that way. And then, worse than any of the others, how fucking good it felt to see him again.

“Your friend on his way yet?” John asks.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Woke me up. Not Robert, though, oh no.”

The corner of John’s mouth lifts a little over the rim of his cup, and he turns away, grinning quietly. “What?” Sam asks. “What’s so funny?”

John shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders. Sam’s seen Dean do the same more times than he can count and it hurts a little to see that familiar roll. “Ah, it’s nothing,” John says. “Just - Mary, my wife, she was awfully good at sleeping through the baby monitor.”

Sam bursts out laughing, surprising himself. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “That sounds familiar.”

They finish their coffee in silence that’s more or less comfortable, John humming softly as he shifts the logs around, letting the air get under the chimney Sam built. Sam watches him with a little bit of concern, waiting for John to knock the fire down, but after a while he sits back quietly.

He sort of wants to ask how old John is, but he doesn’t really want to know.

They hear Michael coming before they see him, the thud of hooves across the hard sand, coming up from behind the camp, the same direction John had taken that night he’d tried to sneak up on them. Michael comes openly, either knowing they’ll hear him or not even thinking about it; stealth had never been one of his strong points. John looks to Sam and they go out to meet Michael together.

Michael’s hanging on for dear life, perched on top of a grey horse, and his look of repressed panic drops away instantly when he spots Sam. There’s a long moment of panic where Sam just _knows_ Michael’s gonna shout “Sam Winchester!” at the top of his lungs, but all that Michael does is give them an abbreviated wave, cut short when he has to grab at the pommel to keep upright.

They hold the horse still while Michael shimmies awkwardly off, grinning broadly. He lands on Sam’s side and Sam pulls Michael in close, speaks low and rapid into his ear: “While you’re out here, my name’s Jimmy and Dean’s Robert, you got that?”

Michael’s eyes flick up to him, his grin faltering only slightly. He doesn’t say anything, just nods, and when John sticks his hand out, Michael shakes it easily enough. They introduce themselves, first names only, thank god, and they get the gray unloaded and settled with the other horses before leading Michael back to the campfire.

Mike, to his credit, doesn’t ask John how he wound up in the desert; he bitches about having to get up so early and tells them about the job he was working down in San Antonio, a fucking _chupacabra_ , can you believe it, a gleeful light in his eyes. It’s only been a few months since he’s been allowed to go hunting on his own, and everything’s got that shiny new patina on it. Sam takes his revenge by offering Michael the very bottom of the pot. Michael picks the sunken grounds out of his teeth with hardly a pause. Sam’s just beginning to relax when a voice from behind them bawls out, “Mikey!”

Dean’s lounging, one shoulder up against the building they’ve got John sleeping in, one hand stuffed into the pocket of his jeans. Michael looks like Christmas has just come early, but he surprises Sam by greeting Dean with an enthusiastic, “Rob!”

When Michael first caught up with them in Beaverton, Oregon, Dean had said it was the worst idea Sam had ever had, to let him stay. That this kid, who Sam had barely even remembered, was going to get himself killed, get one of them killed, or just blow the whole job and bring the Feds down on their heads again. It had taken him approximately a day and a half to warm back up to the kid, who was small and almost helpless and more stubborn than John on his worst days. He hadn’t ever noticed, growing up, but Dean had one hell of a soft spot for kids, especially kids who looked at Dean as though he were a god.

Michael gets to his feet so that Dean can get a better look at him, one thumb on Mikey’s chin, admiring his black eye. “It’s no big deal,” Michael says dismissively, fighting down a smile.

“Chupacabra, huh?” Dean asks. “Yeah, they’re a bitch. Good job, kiddo.”

“Not good enough,” Michael says sourly, sitting back down. “Bobby was on my ass about it, said I was sloppy. I was on my way back to his place when you guys called, thought he was gonna literally rip me a new one when I told him I was gonna be a few days late.”

“Tell him we’ll make it up to him,” Dean says. Sam snorts. “Well, how about it, candyman? You gonna show us the goods or what?”

“Heh,” Michael says. “Hang on.” The bag’s in his duffel and he has to run to get it, but he hands it over to Dean with a solemnity that makes Sam want to laugh.

Dean studies the bag’s contents carefully, passes it all over to Sam with the judgment, “They’re like little fugly shrooms, aren’t they?”

Inside the freezer bag are maybe fifty ugly brown knobs, the quickest road to a spirit journey that they know of. “What the hell is that?” John asks.

“Peyote,” Michael says, with some satisfaction. “The best quality a white kid from Wisconsin can buy. Shit, if I had known I was gonna be crashing at the house of a genuine medicine man, I would’ve just waited.”

Dean claps him on the back. “Nice work, kid.”

 

-

 

“The original plan,” Sam explains, “was a vision quest. We got word of something really bad out here from Billy Ayawamat, a few weeks ago, and said we’d come, try to make contact with it, placate it if we could, kill it if we couldn’t.”

“Vision quests are rites of passages,” Dean says, picking up the narrative. “Traditionally, the seeker goes out into the wilderness alone, bringing nothing of society with them, and then ... waits. He sketches out a circle and fasts, prays - waits for the visions to come. Or heatstroke, whatever gets him first. It moves the soul into a place beyond all its normal concerns.”

“It lasted for four nights,” Sam says, his voice dropping. “Four’s the limit we set before we came out here.” He laughs, under his breath. It’s close enough to the truth, close enough that they don’t have to explain John’s presence, walking off the Path of the Dead as though he was Dean’s spirit guide. “After that, it was going to be too risky.”

“Insta-quest,” Mikey muses. “Just add hallucinogens.”

“Pretty much,” Dean says.

John’s eyes stray back to the bag of peyote, over and over. There was weed in Vietnam, lots of things if he’d wanted them. Peyote makes him think of the dog-eared paperbacks Mary’s little brother always carried around with him, too dense and weird for John to ever get through. He’d kept his hair as long as Michael’s is now, thick and messy over his face.

They talk fast, the three of them, easy in the language of hunters and transients. It makes John’s head hurt. He heard once that it was impossible to learn another language past a certain age; that all the little paths in your brain just up and died if you didn’t use them. He’ll never learn how to do this.

He looks up to see Robert watching him, his wide eyes narrowed. John offers a narrow smile, and Robert returns it with the twitch of an eyebrow. Jimmy's and Michael’s heads are close together, both grinning openly over the details of some case, some mutual friend, John doesn’t even know. There’s the sweat on his face and in the hollow of his throat and Robert’s eyes, far too bright in the dim light.

Robert blinks and then shakes his head hard, like a dog. “How about it, John?” he says, his mouth sliding up into a mocking grin. “You wanna get high?”

John has to laugh at that, like it’s some sort of line from an after-school special. Robert laughs too, nodding, like he appreciates the joke. “Get in on your hunt?” John asks. “Well - fuck yeah, actually. Been a long time, though. For that part of it, I mean.”

“The wilderness is the best place for it,” Robert says wisely. “Reconnecting with nature and all that shit. I mean, everything’s gonna feel all meaningful and special anyway, why not spend a half hour communing with a tree?”

“The heat was what got to me, in Nam,” John says, grinning. “I kept thinking I was going to melt, bones, muscle, all of it, and become part of the jungle. It wasn’t too bad, actually. A lot better than thinking about what was actually going on there.”

And Robert howls, shaking with laughter, reaching across to knock Jimmy’s arm. “I told you!” he crows. “You owe me five bucks, you son of a bitch!”

Jimmy’s looking at John with a mixture of surprise and awe. “Shut the hell up,” he says, and punches Robert back.

“Jimmy’s such a bitch about it,” Robert says confidingly, leaning in close to John. “He’s only ever had _one hit_ off of _one bong_. And he lived in _Northern California_.”

“What a loser,” Mikey snorts. “Sometimes I can’t believe you guys are related, for real.”

There’s a long, echoing silence where they all turn to stare at Michael, who blinks at them. His eyes are red, from sand or sleeplessness. “Someone say something?” he asks, vaguely.

“What?” John says. He slides his palms down the length of his thighs, slowly, wiping the sweat off his hands. “What did you say?”

Michael looks back and forth between John and Robert, frowning. His mouth twitches, like he’s waiting for someone to cue him in to the joke. Robert’s face is white.

“Related?” John says. His fingers are numb. The smile on his face feels ghastly, frozen. “They didn’t tell me they were related.”

Michael’s staring at him as though John’s gone off his nut. “Yeah,” he says, slowly.

“Michael,” Jimmy says tightly, but Michael doesn’t hear.

“They’re brothers,” he says, and the words drop into John’s stomach like jagged chunks of ice.  
  
Robert gets to his feet slowly, not looking at anybody, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, and walks out.

“What’s wrong?” Michael asks, his eyes wide. John looks, but can’t find any words.

 

-

 

Dean stares at the ground between his hunched body and the wall, his palms braced on the dry surface, the stringy puddle of bile that was all his stomach could bring up. Hadn’t even had coffee before Mikey showed up. His jaw tightens and his stomach heaves and he spits a bit more onto the ground. Wipes his chin with the back of his hand. He could walk out into the desert. Sammy’s a good tracker, but not as good as Dean. He could walk out there, maybe find the Path of the Dead and walk forever.

The thought is only in his head for a second before he shakes it loose, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes until there are bright colors blooming against his eyelids and the taste of puke isn’t so bad. He can’t get up. He can feel his legs cramping and he feels like he’s going to heave again but he can’t move.

He gets to his feet slowly, kneeling first on his knees and then just one and then he’s falling, his knees loose and shaky. He catches himself with his forearms, clumsily, his body sagging until his face hits the cool wall, balanced between his hands.

He can hear voices; Sam, maybe, excusing them, hustling Mikey off before he can put the pieces together. He’s a smart kid, make a great hunter some day. He’d figure it out. If he could bring himself to believe it. Then the wicker of Mikey’s horse, fading. Then silence.

He remembered Mikey well enough, when he’d tracked them down. Mikey hadn’t changed much, had gotten taller, thinner, but for all intents and purposes was still the same kid that Dean had dangled on a hook three years earlier. He would’ve remembered anyway.

He can still remember thinking that he would be forgiven for the shtriga, that after Dad cooled off, he’d give Dean a hug and tell him it was okay, even if it wasn’t. It had taken him weeks to figure out that wasn’t gonna happen, and by that time he was a whipped dog, running to please Sammy, Pastor Jim, anyone, but especially Dad. Never really shook that, especially when Dad loomed mythically large in Dean’s brain, any order coming down from on high. It still shames him, to think about it, even after they exorcised that particular demon. Hot, ugly humiliation sitting heavy on his shoulders. This is worse.

The wind kicks up as he turns his boots back towards the center of camp, throwing dust and dirt clods into his nose and mouth. It lifts his short hair away from his skull and blinds him. He stumbles forward, choking, and doesn’t see John until both of John’s hands are wrapped around Dean’s elbows, steadying him.

Dean jerks back instinctively, his eyes streaming. “What are you doing?” he yells. John doesn’t say anything, his face grim and the pressure on Dean’s elbows insistent, forcing him to his knees. It takes Dean a moment to get it and he pulls away from John long enough to yank his shirt off, pull it over both of their heads. The buildings are gone; camp is gone; Sam’s nowhere to be seen, and then, finally, he can breathe again.

He can barely hear John even though he’s panting, open-mouthed, in Dean’s ear, the hand that’s not holding his edge of the shirt down scrubbing furiously at the mud caked in his nose and mouth. They’re close enough that Dean can feel the heat baking off John’s skin.

He hopes Sam is okay. He hopes Michael’s got enough sense to find somewhere to hunker down, wait it out. The sand whips across his back, stinging his skin.

“Brothers,” John shouts. His mouth brushes against Dean’s ear. “I don’t even know what to fucking say.”

“None of your fucking business,” Dean shouts back. They tussle a little for space, moving back and then forward again as Dean’s shirt stretches out of shape. The wind howls. Little tendrils of dust work their way under the shirt and they grab the edges frantically, trying to keep it all out. Can’t fucking breathe through all of the dirt and wind and panic.

“All the secrets - the fake names - makes a lot more sense now,” John says. He’s not shouting anymore, not really, but the disgust, the anger in his voice is thick enough to cut. Dean used to talk to his dad, to the air, really, after John was gone - the same way he’d been leaving voice mails into the void, not really expecting a response. He quit doing it after the first time with Sam, too afraid to face a voice in his head. It’s exactly the way he pictured it, the little curl on John’s lip, the lift of his chin. And it’s just too much. Dean drops the edges of the shirt and grabs John’s collar with both hands, twisting it until their noses are touching.

“Shut the fuck up,” he growls into the face of his father. “You don’t understand, he’s _all I have. You_ weren’t there.”

“That’s disgusting,” John snarls, and Dean leans back and punches him in the face.

It’s a solid hit and they go down, still tangled together in Dean’s shirt. John gets it off first and Dean flails out blindly, connects with something soft. Then John’s knee is in his belly and all the air rushes out of Dean’s lungs. He sucks in a breath instinctively, and instantly his mouth, his nose, his face are covered in sand and he can’t _breathe._ He can hear John choking and Dean’s choking, on his hands and knees in the dirt.

 

-

 

There’s not a lot of talking, after that. The whiteout dies down in a matter of minutes and they find Sam crouched in the big house, covered by John’s sleeping bag. The skin on Dean’s back is scraped raw, from the wind and rolling on the sand, and John’s nose is bleeding. It’s black with dust and clotted blood but he won’t let either of them touch it. He washes it out with the boiled cactus water and they can hear him hissing, outside.

Dean sits quietly while Sam cleans the scratches with water. Only a few bleed when Sam swipes the edge of a clean shirt over them, and Dean hardly moves at all. They avoid each other’s eyes.

There’s dust all over everything and Sam makes tentative motions towards shaking things off, packing things up. One way or another, they’ll be out of here soon. There’s sand in the peyote bag and Sam stares at it for a long time, watching the sun glint across the smooth surface, the way the gnarled surfaces swallow up the light.

Jesus, he can’t believe it. Six years and he feels as bad as if it really was their dad, their dad, not this inexperienced punk, who was sitting out there, cleaning his own wounds. Knowing what his sons did.

If he looks out the window, he can see John’s bowed head. He’s probably sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, twisting his wedding band around his finger. Sam could walk out right now and just tell him, finish the nightmare so that when they sent John back to wherever he came from, he’d look at his boys and know what they were going to grow up to be.

He doesn’t hear Dean stand up; he’s so lost in thought that he startles a little when Dean pulls the bag out of his hands. Dean looks up at him, his eyes flat, and a little chill works its way up Sam’s spine. His mouth twitches but he doesn’t speak, and after a moment he looks down at the ground.

It doesn’t matter; they’ve been living shoulder to shoulder for so long that it’s never really been necessary to talk. “Come on,” Sam says, “let’s go get good and hydrated. It’s gonna be a long night.”

John stands when they step out of the building, facing them with empty hands, palms out. He opens his mouth but Sam just as quickly cuts him off. “We’ve got until dusk to get ready, so start getting ready.” John sets his head down, looking mulish, but Sam fought him for six years and, he realizes giddily, he’s older than John is now. He doesn’t have to listen.

“Look,” Sam says. “You can freak out or you can come with us and help us kill this thing, okay? We’re the best hope you have for getting back to your boys and whatever else we do isn’t any of your business. Got it?” He can feel Dean staring at him but he keeps his gaze steady until John drops his eyes.

There’s not a lot to do. They reconstruct the protective circle. Dean hunkers down to scratch protective symbols around the rim. They fill up their water bags. They double-check the pack, make sure the heat hasn’t gotten to any of the weapons. They don’t know what they’re facing and there’s a little bit of everything going into the bag. The sun’s on its way towards the hills by the time everything’s ready, and they take an early dinner sitting as far away from each other as they can get. Dean’s not talking much - he says a handful of words to Sam over the course of the day and none at all to John, and when he gets up and fishes the bag of peyote out of the duffel, Sam and John both tense.

They draw close and Dean hands out the caps as though he’s dealing cards: one to Sam, one to John, one for himself and then back around. The whiskey is gone, so they make do the best they can with water, chewing the caps just long enough to be able to wash them down, grimacing. They taste about as awful as they look but eventually, they all eat their share.

“I think I’m gonna puke,” Sam says, after a time. He can’t tell if it’s nerves, the peyote or the natural consequence of a stupidly fucked up day, but his stomach’s doing its best to get rid of everything he just put into it. He lifts his hands and stares at them; they’re trembling. A few feet away, Dean snorts laughter.

“Just ride it,” he says, his vowels loose and long. “You’ll feel good, I promise.”

For a moment, Sam can’t figure out who Dean’s talking to. He turns his head and finds John watching Dean, his eyes slitted and thoughtful. He thinks that Dean doesn’t notice, but after a moment Dean’s eyes find John’s and they consider each other over the fire, which licks across the bones of their faces as if it’s looking to devour them.

“Um,” Sam says, mentally reviewing his thought process. “I think I’m kinda high.”

“Me too,” John says thoughtfully, a weighty pause between the first word and the second. Dean’s grinning at them both, more cheerful than he’s been since they arrived in the badlands. Dean laughs again, harder this time. He and John still staring each other down.

And he’s lost in it. In them, in what could’ve been. In true, cliched fashion, he’d only realized what he had when it was gone. He’d treasured Jess, every day with her, even when he was full of ideas about what the rest of their lives would be like. He hadn’t had a life of his own for long enough to take it for granted and then the job became his life again, the endless road and his brother beside him. He chased Dad’s ghost for years, metaphorically and literally, and never caught up to it.

“I think I’ve figured it out,” Sam begins, and loses his train of thought when he notices the color of his hands. He brings them to his face, squints.

“You seein’ tracks?” Dean asks, grinning.

“Yeah,” Sam says, and he rides it, headlong down into a roller coaster that starts with watching the fire burn through his fingernails and palm and straight into his brain. He’s melting, the way that John said, not into the jungle but down into the sand, dissolving into time itself. A trite image, he thinks, right on the heel of the first thought, but it sticks. He can feel his entire life unraveling, all context and memory vanishing until he isn’t sure whether he’s done anything else in his life but sit too close to a fire in the badlands with his brother and his father.

Slowly, through the noise and the crackle of every nerve along his body, he hears singing, soft at first, hardly more then humming. He knows that it’s his father before he turns his head and sees John singing to the fire, his eyes soft and unfocused. He carries the melody softly, thoughtfully, better than Sam would think and it feels so fucking familiar that it _hurts_. He remembers this. Remembers the song, big hands on his face, his whole body heavy with sleep.

“If I get home before midnight, I just might get some sleep ... tonight,” John croons. His voice dies away, and with it goes all sound: the crackle of the fire, Dean’s voice; it all drops away to the shifting of the sand in the wind, pebbles skittering nervously across the surface of shale. And then nothing. Even the buzz of Sam’s senses, the instincts had been trained into him, always searching for the eyes on his back, have fallen still. He sucks in air, drowns in it - his chin touches his chest and then bobs up again. Across the fire, he sees Dean slump to one side, his shoulders lax and his eyelashes trailing shadows over his cheeks. John’s gone, his eyes closed, flat on his back in the sand.  
  
There’s a smell in the air, a thick, gamy smell. Like rot, or an animal laid out to mummify in the sun. “Old bones,” Sam says out loud, pleased with the thought and terrified, somehow both at once, and he feels the press of a muzzle against his ear. The snort of hot breath against his skin and then - blackness.

  



	5. hansbekhart

  
Sam’s eyes snap open. He can feel the grit of sand underneath his skull, beneath the backs of his hands.

He sits up carefully, wincing. He’s not stoned anymore. He remembers falling asleep, remembers listening to his father singing, but the memories are hazy, like a story he only vaguely remembers hearing. He can’t tell how long he’s been out; the sky is filled with blood.

It’s not simply red. It’s not dark. It’s a bowl of viscous liquid swirling above his head, clotted and rotting. He tips his head back and stares at it. He thinks he’s going to puke and then does, scrambling onto his hands and knees, fingers digging into the earth. What comes out isn’t vomit but bones, splinters and dust in his throat, the fragile bones of small animals pouring out of his mouth. He’s still choking when he feels Dean’s hand on his back, rubbing between his shoulder blades, swearing. There’s blood on the bones, little scraps of meat still clinging. The taste is in his mouth and nose and doesn’t go away even when there’s tears and snot dripping down his face.

Dean puts both hands under Sam’s jaw, pulls him up and uses the sleeve of his shirt to wipe Sam’s cheeks. Sam can feel the moment that Dean realizes John’s watching them, and then Dean lifts his chin and turns back to Sam.

“You okay?” he asks. Sam nods, his eyes sliding closed. Dean’s fingers stroke the side of his neck and then he helps Sam to stand. “Good,” he says. “Cuz we’ve got trouble.”

In the distance are three pale horses without riders or saddles, their necks sunk so low that their muzzles nearly brush the ground. Their heads swing back and forth, their eyes white and sightless. As they get closer, Sam sees the long wounds along their sides, great gouges out of their flesh, the skin hanging loose under exposed, rotted meat. The earth shakes under their hooves.

“What the fuck is that,” John breathes. They stand nearly shoulder to shoulder and watch the apparition draw near. Dean is silent.

The horses come to a halt a few yards away, close enough for Sam to smell them, to see the webbing of muscle peeled back from the eye socket of the lead horse. The feathers braided into their hair are matted with blood. One of them pulls its lips back from its teeth, shakes its head at them.

“I think,” Sam says. “I think we’re supposed to ride them.”

“Oh hell no,” Dean says, shaking his own head. “Fuck that noise.” He takes a step forward regardless, grimacing. The lead horse raises its head as he shuffles across the sand, and moves forward. They meet halfway, the horse’s neck stretched out until it’s looking Dean straight in the eye. Dean leans away from it, one shoulder drawing up against his cheek. Then, unwillingly, he lifts his other hand. The horse tilts its head down and then Dean’s fingers are tangled in its hair. Sam can’t see his brother’s face, but Dean’s shoulders hunch and he steps away immediately, wiping his hand on his shirt.

He turns around. “I think you’re right,” he says. “I think - fuck. This is gonna be awful.”

It is. It’s a struggle to mount the horses. They’re enormous. Sam’s only frame of reference are Clydesdales and he’s never seen one in real life. They’re shaped like ordinary horses, like the two they rode out on, but their skin is slippery, thin under his hands. He gives Dean a boost and is waved off by John. Blood soaks through the seat of his pants as soon as he’s up on his own mount. The smell is so much worse up close.

Sam’s horse looks over its shoulder at him, its thick lips quivering. It looks like it’s laughing at him.

As soon as all three of them are mounted, the horses turn and begin to walk into the badlands. The sky ripples above them as they walk, pulsing with their movements as if the air itself is closing up behind them. The shale has turned to sand underneath the horses’ hooves and Sam doesn’t look too closely at it; there are bones underneath the sand, just waiting to be unearthed by a careless kick. He can hear the bones speaking to him, a low hum just outside of his hearing.

He watches the white glimmer of shoulder bone, almost buried underneath meat. Watches Dean in the lead, his head up, sitting almost comfortably on his horse. John’s behind him, and he gives Sam a grim nod when their eyes meet. He looks absolutely miserable.

The clouds clot above their heads, scabbing over the sky. They’ve been crossing an endless plain, dotted with hoodoos, and Dean lets out a shout when he spots the hill, closer then it should be for them to have just seen it. There’s a skeletal tree at the top of the gentle slope, its fingers clawing at the setting sun. Piles of bones, too far away to see the state of them but the smell washes over them, death and stone and unnameable things. And then, in the center of the golgotha, is a man, sitting cross-legged in front of a fire.

He watches them approach with only the faintest smile creasing the wrinkles that line his face. The horses stop dead some distance away, their heads bobbing up and down, lips drawn back over their teeth. Their flanks rise and fall but they make no sound. The man nods at them and they turn away as one, heads down.

“Come,” the man says. “Sit.”

They obey as automatically as the horses did, ringing the fire across from the old man, Dean in the middle, Sam and John flanking him. The old man grins at John, most of his teeth missing. “You made it home,” he says.

John says nothing, his jaw tight. He leans in close to Dean, speaks loud enough for Sam to hear. “He’s the one,” he hisses in Dean’s ear. “He sent me out into the badlands.”

The old man’s staring off into the distance. His entire body is wrapped up in a cloak, and they can see him moving underneath it. “How the hell did he do that?” Dean asks. He’s turned away, but Sam can hear the irritation, the tension in Dean’s voice. “Did he - did he send you into the future? Curse you? What the hell happened?”

John shakes his head. “I don’t know. You think I knew I was in the future? He just said ... he said I’d wander forever and never find rest.”

“S’true,” the old man says, grinning at them all. “True for all of you. You’re in my dream now.”

“Yeah?” Dean challenges. “I’d like to see you try.”

“Nah,” the old man says. “No need to worry ‘bout it yet, hunter. Here.” He pulls a long pipe from beneath his cloak and offers it to them across the low fire. It pulls the cloak back over his arms and for a long moment they don’t even notice, their eyes on the pipe that he’s holding out, wrapped in strips of hide, hung with dirty feathers, and then Sam’s eyes draw up towards the bowl and skeletal fingers clutching it. His mind’s eye traces over the brown, leathery flesh that’s supposed to be there, actually sees it - and then he blinks and realizes what the man really is.

His arm, his hands are bone, a moving skeleton made of old, dust colored bones. Past the long stretch of the humerus, Sam can see the delicate curve of ribs, exposed to the world. John nearly manages to strangle his reaction, the noise kept deep in his throat.

Dean leans back, his hands curling into fists on his thighs. “What the fuck.” The man says nothing, just motions with the pipe, as if he’s getting a little impatient. “What is that,” Dean says, unnerved. “Some sort of, of peace pipe thing?”

“Nah,” the bone man says. “Just a bit of tobacco between friends. But you can offer your prayers through the smoke, if you want.”

Dean takes the pipe warily, takes two drags off of it, one quick and the second long. He stares down at it for a long time, considering. He makes to give it to John and then hesitates, glancing sidelong at Sam even as John takes the pipe from him. The tobacco is sweet when it gets around to Sam - Dean doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes when he passes the pipe over - and Sam coughs. He never picked up the same casual habit that Dean did, plowing through packs in bars and during hustles, going months without touching a cigarette. It makes his head swim, more then it was already.

The bone man watches them closely. He hasn’t stopped grinning since they sat down. There’s something familiar about him, Sam thinks - the set of his eyes or the tone of his voice, maybe - as if he’s looking at someone he knows, many years down their path. He looks over at John. Not the same, in their case - all he’s ever seen is baby fat and freckles.

The pipe goes around twice more, passed from hand to hand. It reminds Sam of being in high school, smoking furtive bowls bought in twomp sacks from someone’s older brother, never Dean, who snorted at the idea of actually selling to minors but would occasionally smoke Sam out. Dean pokes the tip of his pinkie into the ashes, hands the pipe back to the bone man. “It’s dusted,” he says, and the bone man howls with laughter.

“If you say so,” he says, tucking the pipe back into his cloak. “Guess you’re ready, then.”

“Yeah, let’s quit the foreplay and just fuck,” Dean says, getting his feet under him.

John’s hand on his arm stops Dean dead. He looks at John’s hand and then up. Sam can’t see his brother’s face, only a slice of his ear and cheek and the arch of his eyebrow, raised high. “He’s tough,” John says.

Dean’s silent for a long moment, the muscle at the corner of his jaw working. Then, he nods sharply. He doesn’t look at Sam as he gets to his feet, doesn’t look at John as he brushes their father’s hand away. Walks away from them, towards the circle of the bone man’s inviting arms. And for a moment, Sam doesn’t even recognize Dean - the line of his shoulders, the curve of his back that should be so familiar and suddenly, uncomfortably isn’t.

Dean looks over his shoulders, looks straight at Sam. “Don’t look so constipated, dude. It’s gonna be fine.”

“Cocky fucker,” Sam grumbles. Dean throws his head back and laughs.

There’s a crude circle some yards from the fire, hardly more than a patch of earth that’s slightly more bare then the stone around it. The old man draws one bone foot along the edge of it, a literal line in the sand that curves around them. Making sure that they all see it, Sam’s guessing. Warning against interference. Dean stands easy, watching the old man. It’s ugly to see him move, his bones grinding together as he shifts his weight from foot to foot. The fibula bends. It looks so fragile and Sam knows that Dean’s eyes will be on it, assessing the weakness.

John’s tense, close enough to Sam that he can feel the heat of John’s arm. Dean’s loose and ready, his knees bent, his shoulders forward, waiting.

The first rush seems almost accidental, their torsos knocking together, like bears locking shoulder to shoulder, savage. The bone man grins into the side of Dean’s neck, his fingers wrapped around Dean’s forearms. Not grappling, barely fighting, teeth against Dean’s skin. Sam’s fingers dig into his own thighs.

Dean breaks away, panting. His skin is dark from the sun and white where the bone man had held him, fading as blood rushes back in under the skin. He wipes his forehead with the heel of his hand. He’s facing John and Sam now, not even seeing them. His teeth are bared as he surges forward, getting his arm underneath the bone man’s, lost underneath the cloak. It’s a solid underhook but the bone man just lowers his head and slams the top of his skull into Dean’s chest.

Dean loses ground, but it isn’t until he starts laughing that Sam starts to worry. Dean strips his shirt off, drops it on the ground. There are drops of sweat between his shoulder blades and he shakes his arms, stretches them back. “You are strong,” he says. “So what happens if I lose, huh? Do I get a spin on the dreamwalking DeLorean or what?”

The bone man stops, his head cocked to one side. He’s not grinning anymore but he doesn’t have the lungs to be winded, the muscles to wear out. “Don’t waste your breath, hunter,” he says. “The sun will dry the spit from your throat.”

“Oooh,” Dean says, grinning back. “And he says _I’m_ cocky.”

He grunts as the bone man gets both arms under his shoulders, bringing their chests up together for just an instant before Dean’s stepping back and then driving forward, hooking his leg around that creaking fibula. The bone man stumbles forward and Deans’ behind him in an instant, wrapping one hand around his throat and the other flattening over the bone man’s face, over his mouth. Sam can see the muscles in Dean’s arm tense even as he’s still finding his hold and then he’s pulling the bone man’s head back, pushing hard into the bundle of nerves and soft skin between the nose and mouth.

The bone man _screams_. Sam’s hands fly up over his ears at the same time as John’s. The bone man’s limbs flail out and Dean takes a solid hit to the nose, snapping his head back. It’s enough to loosen his grip and the bone man struggles away.

“You,” he howls, his face distorted and purple. “You, hunter - you’ll walk the Milky Way forever. And you’ll go alone. But you won’t suffer alone.” He drags a finger up into the air, throws it in Sam’s direction. “As you grow thirsty, so will he. And just like you, he will never be able to drink, and food will never satisfy him. Like you, he will never die. You will chase each other across the sky.”

He’s still shrieking when he launches himself at Dean, hands clawed in front of him, and Dean goes down, pivoting to the side, his foot snapping up. The tibia snaps, the fragile fibula following, the old man’s arms stretching out instinctively to catch himself, howling. Dean was already moving out of his crouch and he regains his feet just in time for the bone man’s full weight to hit him, just off-balance enough that he’s able to spin to the side, throwing the bone man past him and into the fire.

It’s all over in a fraction of a second, one smooth motion of attack, counter-attack, the tumble of momentum and then the bone man’s in the fire, writhing, and Dean is standing over him, hands loose at his sides. He’d look calm but for the flat, dead expression in his eyes. For a long moment, he just stares down at the bone man and Sam waits for it, waits for Dean to make some crack, but all that Dean does is bring his boot down on the bone man’s skull, twice. It breaks open with a dry crack and dust flies up in the air, spinning over the fire as if it has a life of its own. The bone man is still.

Sam and John approach Dean slowly. John was on his feet as soon as the bone man was down, grinning his fool head off, but he’s cooled it down a little by the time Dean turns around. Dean meets John’s eyes and then doesn’t look away. John’s mouth twitches, hesitantly.

Dean steps forward and grabs John by the collar. John’s hands come up and close over Dean’s, but he doesn’t try to pull away. Sam might as well be invisible. “You,” Dean says, very rapidly, “you couldn’t beat him.”

“No,” John says, surprised. “You’re a better hunter then I am.”

The corner of Dean’s jaw works. Sam’s just about to pull Dean off their dad when Dean drops his hands, pats John’s chest and then turns away.

He stiffens before Sam or John have noticed anything, one hand rising protectively - in front of Sam, not John. “Thought this was over,” he says. Sam’s not sure if who Dean’s talking to, but it isn’t Sam or John who answer.

The horse’s head bobs up and down, nodding in agreement or in laughter. _Almost,_ it says.

“Look,” Dean says. “No more, okay? No more wrestling contests, no more curses, no more - just, no. I’m done. I’m going home.”

They’re backing up, all three of them, but the horse’s voice holds them fast. _Wait._

“For what?” Sam asks, wary. His fingers touch the butt of the gun stuck inside his jeans. Just ordinary bullets in there, but maybe it’ll hurt this thing bad enough for them to be able to go for the gear.

The horse’s head lowers and its hooves spread apart, and for a crazy moment, Sam knows it’s going to charge them, knock them all into the fire just like they did to the bone man, and then -

It’s bowing to them. _Thank you,_ it says.

Sam’s the first one to catch on. “That - he wasn’t your master,” he says slowly. “He was controlling you.”

_Master,_ the horse snorts. _I am the hills. I am the sand and the wind. He was not my master, but I was enslaved. That much is true._

“You brought us here,” Dean says.

The horse lowers its gaze. Its eyelashes are white and the left lid is open and raw, the eyeball clear enough through the skin. _I walk far, hunter. I was told that you do as well._

“Told by who?” Sam asks, but Dean is louder.

“You been controlling all of this, then?” He spreads his arms, covering the desert, John. “This is all your doing, is it?”

_He is a gift to you, hunter,_ the horse says, and Dean steps back, instinctively. He bumps against John, whose eyes dart between Dean and the horse, uncertain. Sam steps close to John, close enough to smell the old sweat on his skin.

“Don’t,” he says, low and quiet. “Don’t say anything. Not unless you really want to know.”

John twists over his shoulder to meet Sam’s gaze. Keeps looking even when Dean’s voice cracks, “A gift?” He searches Sam’s eyes the way he used to look for the truth, some sign that Sam was lying to him. He’d always find it, could spot it from a hundred yards in Dean’s eyes as well, any cover-up or conspiracy.

“Don’t ask,” Sam says softly, and John nods.

_A token of my gratitude,_ the horse says. _My respect, as well. Take him with you and live in peace, hunter._

Dean’s head is lowered. Sam could reach him if he stepped around John, he’s almost close enough to reach. “That’s it?” Dean asks. “No - no bargain, no ten years and then I’m stuck on the Milky Way with all this lovely scenery? No strings attached?”

_My gift to you._

Dean rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “It’s not supposed to work that way,” he says, chuckling. “Look, it’s not that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak, but - it doesn’t work that way. It’s not supposed to be that _easy._ ”

The horse says nothing, blinking placidly. Sam digs his fingernails into palms, willing his mouth shut. If he opens his mouth, the first word out will be his brother’s name, but after that - he doesn’t know. He watches the sunburned skin on the back of Dean’s neck. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” John whispers.

“You already knew that,” Sam replies.

“No,” John says. “No, this -”

“Shut up,” Dean says. “Shut up, both of you.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” John counters.

Dean ignores him. “How did you _know?_ ”  
  
_I walk far,_ the horse says again. Its tail flicks against its side, chasing away the flies that are crawling over its flanks. _I meet many people. Dreamwalkers, like the medicine man._ It tosses its head towards the dying fire, where all that’s left of the bone man is a single skeletal hand being eaten up by ash. As his bones turn to dust, the landscape around them begins to fade, first the tree and then the sky until they are in no country at all, no land, the wind whipping Sam’s hair into his eyes. _I met another medicine man and I asked him to help me. He has helped me. You have done me a great deed, hunter. Take your gift and go._

“It’s not supposed to be like this!” Dean shouts. He throws Sam off when he grabs Dean’s shoulder. He strides forward like he’s going to punch the horse in the face. It lets him grab it, yank his fingers through its mane, as patient as if Dean was a child.

“Hey,” Dean says, “You can’t get something for nothing. Our buddy, he’s the one that asked us to come out here, it didn’t have anything to do with you and, you know, cool that you’re free now, but - I almost said yes, the last time something offered me this, but - I just -” He sags forward, his arms going around the horse’s long neck. The horse leans its head against his, its white eyes rolling towards Sam. It stares at him in silence as Dean recovers, visibly putting himself back together. Dean lays a hand over the horse’s muzzle, strokes it once and then turns away.

“Come on,” he says. “We’re leaving.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” John growls, before Sam can say anything.

“No,” Dean says, raising his eyebrows. “This isn’t a democracy, Johnny boy. We know you like us, but you’re going back where you belong and that’s the last of it. I don’t want to hear another word.”

“What?” Sam says, blankly.

Dean tries for a smile, fails, shrugs. He claps a hand on each of their shoulders. “Come on.”

 

-

 

John’s watch stopped the night he left the bone man. He doesn’t like not knowing the time, trying to figure out the clock by the sun and his own stomach. Jimmy’s little phone has a watch in it, but he’s always suspected that time ran a little funny out here. And anyway, he wouldn’t need to see the seconds ticking by to know that they’re leaving the badlands.

It’s like leaving a dream. John’s legs are heavy and his mind slogs ten steps behind him, his tongue too thick to give voice to any of the questions that are twisting his guts up. The sky lightens and then darkens again to natural night as they pass out of the horse’s lands. John can still feel its eyes - in the wind and the sand and the hills - but the air tastes different. The hills are just hills again.

It doesn’t take long. It’s easy, actually - he watches his feet as he walks even though he knows he didn’t really get lost in the desert. They pass through the valley and the maze of hoodoos, Robert striding ahead, Jimmy hanging back. John in the middle, tongue-tied and confused.

John wants to ask. His whole body itches and shakes with it. Jimmy’s right, though. He’s looked for the answer and he doesn’t want to know, not really. There aren’t always answers to what he does these days, no motive or logic or reason. He can let it lie.  
  
They find the Chevy’s tire tracks. The car itself is gone, deep treads where John left it and then nothing else. They gather around it. “Huh,” John says.

“You parked your car all the way out here?” Robert asks, disbelieving. “You’ll be lucky if there’s still paint on her.”

“I wasn’t planning on leaving her out here,” John snaps.

“Bet the dashboard’s already cracked too, heat like this,” Robert adds.

The Chevy’s tracks are a line of demarcation, and they breathe a little easier once they’re past it. They find the car another mile or two on, sitting in Billy’s yard as if it never left, paint job and dash intact. Robert sniffs, his arms folded over his chest. He and Jimmy look Billy’s house up and down, but they stay back in it, as far as they can get and still be in the yard.

“No satellite dish,” Jimmy says. “Missing the bathroom too, the one next to the kitchen, you remember? He must’ve added that himself.”

“He was talking about getting indoor plumbing,” John says. “It’s about damn time. Every time we come here, I gotta get up in the middle of the night to walk the boys to the outhouse. They think a rattlesnake’ll bite them.”

“I bet they do,” Robert says. Jimmy scowls at him.

Billy’s house is dark. The adobe is white under the moon, the light picking out all the fine details of the house, the chain fencing, the dog runs. The dogs themselves are lined up at the fence behind the house, eyes glittering. When John got here, the boys sleeping hard in the back seat, he started hearing the dogs nearly a half mile off. By the time John turned the Chevy into Billy’s yard, the noise was only bearable because the boys were so damn excited. Seeing them, silent and watchful, sends an icy finger up John’s spine, but - at least they’re not waking the whole house up.

He can hardly think. His boys are inside that house. He turns around, catches Jimmy and Robert staring at him. They haven’t moved any closer then the Chevy, huddled together close to her flank, shoulders hunched.

“Thank you,” John says. “It’s been an honor.”

They look at each other and then Jimmy steps forward, reaching to take John’s outstretched hand. “John, it’s -”

A clear, high voice rings out across the yard, and Jimmy freezes.

“Stop right there,” it says, “or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

They all turn. There’s a glimmer of metal where the low wall in front of Billy’s house splits in front of the door, splitting the shadows there in two. “Say the password,” the voice commands.

“Dean, what the hell,” John says. He’s looking over his shoulder and doesn’t see Robert tense. “Do you have a gun back there?”

“Say the password,” Dean says again. The barrel of the gun slides a little further out and John can see tiny fingers wrapped around the handle. Not shaking, not even a little.  
  
_“No girls allowed,”_ John says, exasperated. “Now come out of there.”

Dean slithers out from behind the wall, the barrel of the gun pointed at the ground as he pushes the safety back on with both thumbs. He’s not quite as tall as the wall is and even in the moonlight John can see how much more blond his hair’s gotten. He approaches them warily. “I didn’t steal it,” he says.

“Yes, you did,” John says, and lifts his son into his arms and holds him tight.

Dean makes a little surprised noise against John’s shoulder and then, all at once, sags against him, wrapping his arms around John’s neck. He’s just as grubby as John thought he’d be, dust in the creases of his neck. His hair feels clean enough when John curves his hand around the back of Dean’s head and presses his cheek against the crown.

God, he missed his boys.

“You take care of Sammy for me?” he whispers.

Dean nods. “He listened real good,” he whispers back.

John knows that Robert and Jimmy are just standing there, watching him. It’s a long time before he can raise his head and look at them, jostle Dean enough in his arms that Dean leans back. “Deano, I want you to meet some friends of mine,” he says. He falters a little when he sees the look in their eyes, comically wide. “Never had a six year old threaten to shoot you before?” he asks, grinning. They blink at him, and then Jimmy’s sticking a hand out.

“Nice to meet you, Dean. I’m Jimmy.”  
  
Dean looks at Jimmy’s hand disdainfully and buries his face back against John’s shoulder. “Dean,” John reproves. Dean turns his head just far enough to be able to see Jimmy out of one eye, considering, then he wiggles a hand free and sticks it out for Jimmy to take. It’s an awkward motion - John’s not sure he’s ever made Dean shake hands before, but Dean mumbles hello and shakes Robert’s hand too.  
  
“I hear you’re a big brother,” Jimmy says. Dean frowns.

“Sorry,” John says, when Dean doesn’t respond. “He uh, he doesn’t talk much. Especially not to people he’s just met.”

“That’s okay,” Jimmy says softly. Robert’s not saying anything. He and Dean are staring at each other, barely blinking.

“Well,” John says. Robert glances up at him. He shakes his head, like he’s clearing water out of his ears. “Come inside. I need to get him to bed.”

Dean relinquishes the gun easily enough and is mostly asleep by the time John nudges the door to Billy’s spare bedroom open with his hip. Sammy’s still asleep, visibly cleaner then Dean is, only the faintest touch of sun across his nose. He’s snoring.

“That’s Sammy,” Dean says unexpectedly as John sets him down at the edge of the bed, looking up to where Jimmy and Robert are peering in through the open door. Dean points at Sam, in case they’re confused, rubbing sleepily at his eyes with the other hand. “He’s my brother.”

“That’s cool,” Robert says slowly. “He’s uh. He’s kinda loud.”

“That’s because he sleeps on his back,” Dean says, using both hands to pull off his shoes and socks. “But he drools on the pillow if I push him onto his side, so it’s better this way. Are you hunters like my Dad?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy says.

“That’s good,” Dean says, and climbs over Sammy’s prone body, careful not to step on the baby. “Did you kill the monster, Daddy?”

“I helped,” John says.

“Okay,” Dean says. He wraps an arm around the baby and pulls him close. “Good night, daddy. Good night, um -”

“Robert and Jimmy,” John supplies.

“Robert and Jimmy,” Dean finishes, his eyes already closed. “Sammy says night too.”

They’re quiet as they file back into Billy’s living room. It’s crammed with stuff the way most hunter’s homes are, charms and carvings and feathers filling every available surface, pinned haphazardly to the wall. The adobe keeps the rooms cool and there’s an open window somewhere, bringing a fresh breeze.

“Dean seems like a good kid,” Jimmy offers.

“Yeah, he’s real smart,” John says, shaking his head. He hefts the gun in his hand thoughtfully. “He doesn’t even know how to shoot one of these.”

“Not yet,” Jimmy says, grinning.

“Quit it,” Robert mutters, throwing an elbow into Jimmy’s side.

“Are you stuck here?” John asks quietly. “Can you get back to where - to where you belong?”

Robert nods, his eyes shifting to the side, moving over Billy’s furniture. “Yeah,” he says. “We’ll get home okay.”

John nods. “Thanks again,” he says. “For everything. I’m not - whatever you guys do when you’re alone, you’re right, it’s none of my business. I’m just. I’m grateful that you helped me get back to my family.” He offers his hand again, and Jimmy takes it.

“It was good getting to know you, John,” he says softly. “I know you’ll take good care of your kids.”

He steps back, glancing at his brother, who looks at John for a long moment, not moving. He doesn’t pull away when John steps closer but he does sway, just a little, towards John and then away. “Robert,” he says, holding out his hand, and that’s as far as he gets.

Robert’s hand wraps around John’s wrist and yanks him foreward, stumbling up against Robert’s body and for a moment, he thinks that Robert is going to hit him, and then Robert’s mouth closes over his and everything else drops away.

He’s never kissed a man before. Been a long time since he’s kissed anybody. Robert’s mouth is soft against his but he can feel stubble rubbing over his upper lip, on his chin. He can feel Robert breathing, slowly. Some part of John knows that Jimmy - Robert’s _boyfriend_ , his _brother, something_ \- is standing right behind them. He takes Robert’s face between his hands and Robert slides his tongue over John’s bottom lip, slow. His fingers flex where they’re still wrapped around John’s wrist.

The kiss breaks and opens again, John nudging his mouth against Robert’s, the tip of their tongues brushing. He moves away before he wants to, both of them looking down, foreheads nearly close enough to touch. John can’t breathe. His stomach cramps and twists. He can feel Robert’s lips curling upward and it’s hard not to smile back, staring down where their bodies touch.

“Goodbye, John,” Dean whispers.

The house feels the same after they leave, quiet, the thin flow of air opening up the low rooms. He sees movement out the back window, squeezes through the kitchen door.

“Hey, John,” Billy says, pulling the pipe out of his mouth. “Welcome back.”

“Hey, Billy,” John says. “This was all your doing, wasn’t it?”

Billy chuckles, low in his throat, staring out at the endless sky. John had never seen so many stars before the first time he came out here, never saw the Milky Way wandering over his head. “Yep,” Billy says. “You’re welcome.”

Dean’s already asleep when John shuts the door behind him, pulling his dusty clothes off in the dark. He finds the duffel when he stubs a toe on it, and pulls out what he hopes is a clean shirt. He doesn't really notice his fingers rubbing his mouth, over and over. Sammy stirs a little as John moves them over, clears a space on the side of the bed by the door, but all he does is curl onto his side, tucking himself into Dean’s arms. John’s arms cover them both.

It’s a long time before he can sleep.

 

-

 

They come back to themselves slowly, the world and the dream blurring together, solidifying only where they touch, where Dean’s hands are fisted in Sam’s shirt, where Sam’s fingers spread across Dean’s shoulder blades. Their legs are tangled, one on top of the other, on their knees by the cold fire. Not crying. Not speaking. Beyond all of it. Just clutching at each other, panting, soft whining noises slipping out between clenched and bared teeth.

Sunrise. Just the bare edge of it, the sky still purple in the center of its wide bowl, the sun still hidden behind the hills. They wrestle close together, slowly, not even meaning to until Sam’s got his forearms flat across Dean’s back, his fingers knotted in Dean’s short hair. Until Dean’s hands are moving restlessly up and down Sam’s ribs, sprawled almost in Sam’s lap.

“I -” Dean says, “I can’t - I couldn’t -” His whole body jerks against Sam’s, a sob he couldn’t quite hold in.

“I know,” Sam says, “I know.”

"Fuck, _Sam,"_ Dean chokes on the words. The sound of them tears Sam’s chest open, everything pouring out at once and all he can do is ride it, heaving breaths between his teeth. It grows and deepens, a whole running fountain of grief and wonder and things he wouldn’t know how to name, and Dean against him, clutching at him, holding each other up.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. You can find me on [tumblr.](http://hansbekhart.tumblr.com/)


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